


Ghost Towns In The Ocean

by everythingintransit



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: M/M, so youd better enjoy it, um so far this is the best thing ive ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2018-12-08 16:32:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 59,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11650452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everythingintransit/pseuds/everythingintransit
Summary: - In which Ryan is unhappy, poor, and obsessed with his dog. Brendon Urie moves into Ryan's house against his will, and fills the whole place with the scent of berry flavored bubble gum, which Ryan tries to counter with cigarette smoke, absolute angst, and the sound of him screaming at his typewriter."But I have no doubt, one day the sun will come out."[Based off of Coldplay's album "Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends"]





	1. Soul Survivor

Ryan was depressed. It was as simple as that, with nothing more to say for anyone could tell that he was depressed simply by spending a short amount of time with him, which was unlikely. Yet, Ryan hadn't spent any amount of time with anyone but his dog for three whole months. Days and nights had slipped together into one big mess of mental debris which mainly consisted of him staring at the ceiling and spending too many hours thinking about trying not to think about things like-

September.

September had been amazing, September had been everything right in the world. September had been the start of fall, and the auburn leaves had just started to fall from the trees; the world had started to die yet Ryan had felt so alive. However, it had been on the last day of that most beautiful month when everything had come crashing down, where so many things had gone wrong, and Ryan had been left broken and crumpled, just like the dead leaves that everyone worked so hard to get rid of.

So September had blended into October, and October was still semi-functioning, well it had been until Gabe had gone and fucked things up, as Gabe tended to do. Gabe had never been the best of friends, but sometimes he did try, but then again sometimes trying just made things worse. Well, things had stopped seeming alright after Gabe did what he did, and then Ryan had thrown his laptop out the window and October had turned into November and Ryan lit everything on fire in November and November had turned into December and the "F" key on Ryan's typewriter had gotten stuck in December and that useless "F" key had defeated any purpose left of getting up in the mornings.

Except for Dottie.

Dottie had been ruining every day for him for the past three months, and Ryan was completely sure that he was not cut out to take care of a dog when he obviously was not in fit condition to take care of himself. Yesterday, he had considered throwing his typewriter out the window but that would be the thing to completely break down his life completely, and then thought against it. He would fill in every "F" himself if he had to. But he didn't know where any pens or pencils or markers or anything used for writing in his house had gone so he sat and hated himself for the computer issue and hated the typewriter for the broken "F" key but he wasn't feeling hatred, no, he was just numb. One day, he actually got up without Dottie throwing her little body on top of his face to get him to let her outside.

It was because Jon was calling.

It was January, and Jon had stopped calling far too long ago, so when he called that lonely, cold, January morning, Ryan was all too excited to pick up the phone. Jon hadn't provided any information that had excited Ryan, instead, Ryan was provided with some fairly terrible news. Before he could tell Jon exactly what he thought Jon could do with that idea, Jon hung up on Ryan. Which therefore infuriated him, but he wasn't going to give in and call Jon back.

Though Ryan wouldn't admit it, Jon's idea was smart, and ultimately a million times better than Gabe's pathetic excuse for a helpful addition to Ryan's life.

Ryan was a writer. Though he had stopped writing for two and a half weeks after he had thrown his laptop out of the window that day in October. He remembered how he had felt after that, how his breath had fogged in the chilly fall air, how he heard the crash of the laptop hitting the frosty grass outside, how the sliver of a moon had frowned at Ryan, and how he hadn't slept for two days after that incident. Then, in an act of desperation, he had dug his typewriter out of wherever it had gone and wrote on there instead. After a few days of doing nothing, he then spent a few days writing, pouring all of his anger and furies into that typewriter whose keys were evidently not cut out for Ryan's angry fingers hitting them multiple times throughout the day, which Ryan had come to realize in December. Typewriters proved to be much more frustrating than Ryan had remembered, and Dottie didn't like the loud clicking of the keys so she had spent most of her time downstairs, barking at any car or person that went by, which, helpfully, reminded Ryan that life was still going on and everything wasn't completely falling apart. He began to take to Dottie's barking, which caused him to write even more.

And then came the fateful day in November when he had written something that he shouldn't have. He didn't count it as leaving the house, not when he was burning all of someone's belongings in his snow-stained backyard. He remembered that too, how his misty breath had looked like a dragon in the freezing winter air, how he heard the lighter flicker and flicker until the flame finally caught, how the lighter fluid smelled like highways and neon, how everything had suddenly turned a bright, burning orange, and how he had regretted none of it. Or so he thought, until the next day when the things pinned up in his room and carelessly thrown to the back of his closet had all disappeared into the pile of ashes buried in snow in his backyard.

So when that fiery November melted into a December that was surprisingly void of feelings, Ryan had spent his Christmas alone and hated it. Usually, he would go out and buy Dottie the dog toy she deserved for Christmas and her birthday, but this year he didn't buy anyone anything and had only received a package containing a pair of ski goggles and a bag of Jolly Ranchers from Jon. Ryan had gone upstairs and chucked the ski goggles out the window with a sense of elation, hating the stupid inside joke that they represented. Treating himself, he had spent that night drinking old wine and eating Jolly Ranchers, wondering if anyone made Jolly Rancher flavored wine, and how it would taste if they did.

The next morning, he had lain in bed until 1 in the afternoon and finally pulled himself out of the nest that he spent far too much time in. Everything had hit him suddenly and terrified him; he had thrown an expensive, important, and helpful part of his life out of the window and he had lit the rest of his life on fire so now there was nothing left but a stupid fucking typewriter and an annoying dog. Ryan had basically lost his mind. Three days spent typing out things that he would end up burning a few months later, he had ruined his "F" key by typing the word "fuck" so often that he broke his key, which was just another excuse for how bad his writing was; any writer who doesn't curse in dialogue or in a first person view but curses in any other type of writing than that too often is a sorry excuse for a writer, and Ryan didn't even know whether he was writing in dialogue or first-person view, all he knew was that he was angry and that he didn't care about how others would judge his writing and his fucking "F" key wouldn't stop sticking.

So he had dragged himself downstairs where he lay in the middle of the entranceway until he fell asleep at 5 in the evening with Dottie on top of him. The next morning, he had enjoyed a breakfast consisting fully of three bowls of wine which he drank with a straw because it was funny and he could blow bubbles and he had been sort of really tipsy so it wasn't really his fault. He hadn't realized how many bottles had been in the house, and had finished them all off during the first week of January. It was probably because of the time William's parents had visited and purchased enough wine to kill a couple elephants, which was followed by them leaving early because they were drunk half the time and were terrorizing the dog, so they left all their wine behind. So when the second week of the month had arrived, Ryan was out of all the food in his house other than stale instant oatmeal, and then Jon had called him.

It was January 13th.

Jon was standing at Ryan's door, wearing a coat and stamping his feet to keep the feeling in them. Snow was falling hard, and Ryan wouldn't open his fucking door. Dottie kept barking but that was the only sound coming from inside his house, and Jon began to worry about whether his friend was actually okay. After what had happened on the last day of September, Jon had tried to be there for Ryan but pushing people away was one of Ryan's many talents, so Jon had given him space. But maybe he had given him too much space because calling someone whose life had completely fallen apart once or twice a month wasn't exactly as helpful as actually spending time with them. So Jon rung the bell one more time, and then the door was finally flung open. Jon had been Ryan expecting to yell, or something. However, he just stared at Jon, his face void of expression.

"Can I come in?" Ryan stepped back, his hand moving to pet Dottie's head, something that almost seemed like a reflex at that point. Jon shut the door behind him, knowing how Ryan felt about people never shutting doors behind them right away.

Ryan looked bad. He looked too thin, with his wrinkled clothes hanging off of him. His skin was pale, radiating an almost grey look. His dark eyes looked hollow and stared at Jon from behind his black-rimmed glasses. As if some part of something that made him stand straight and exude self-confidence had been taken from him, he stood slumped, his silhouette a sad figure. But it wasn't an "as if" situation because something that made him stand straight and exude self-confidence had been taken from him. Not something, someone. So Ryan petted his dog and gave Jon the angry, mistrustful glare that Jon knew far too well but wasn't used to being on the receiving end of it.

"I'm here-" Jon began.

"Why do you say "I'm here?" Where else would you be? No, you're off in Malaysia taking a cooking class on how to make The Perfect Boiled Bananas, not here in my house. What kind of stupid thing is it to say "I'm here?" Have I not taken notice of the fact that you arrived? Did I open the door for no one?" Ryan stuck out his arm, waving it in front of him and deliberately hitting his friend. "Oh look!" He continued, "Jon's here! I had no idea!"

"-to make sure that your house is fit for someone else to move into it. I'm glad to hear you still remember my name." Ryan scowled, glaring at the ground. Dottie scampered out from under his hand and hopped over to Jon. She was about to jump up to greet him, but Ryan's angry voice tore through the air.

"Dottie! Down." He clicked his tongue- "C'mere, Dot." Dottie circled her way back to her owner, and lay down on his feet, gazing up at Jon with a big smile on her face. Ryan felt that if Dottie was kind to Jon, then it was basically him being kind to Jon, and that couldn't happen.

"Do you think I'm unfit to make sure my own house is "fit" for someone else to move into?" Ryan directed his attention back to the person who he had used to have conversations with every day, the person who he could have once called his best friend, the person who he had shared all his deepest secrets and insecurities with, the person who he had loved. Now that person was regarding Ryan with a somewhat pitiful expression, and Ryan felt defensive and cross.

"Yes, I do," Jon said simply, replying to a question that Ryan had asked but had forgotten what he had asked because he had been too busy trying to be angry at Jon.

"Well," started Ryan, "do whatever you want. Look around." Ryan then sat down on the floor and stared up at Jon with that cold, furious look in his eyes as Dottie licked his face.

"Great. Wonderful." Announced Jon, going into the kitchen, where Ryan heard him opening and closing cabinets for some time before he heard him speak again. "What on earth have you been eating all this time?" Jon reappeared in the entryway, raising his eyebrows at Ryan.

"Tortillas. Yogurt. And wine."

"You don't seem to have any of those things."

"Oh, I have oatmeal. And some Jolly Ranchers." Jon stared at him, unbelieving.

"That oatmeal expired three years ago. It was bought in the 90s or somethi-"

"It's not mine." Jon looked exasperated. Seemingly giving up, he sat down on the floor next to Ryan. Though he had come to Ryan's house for a purpose that he would have told to his friend, what he really needed to do was talk to Ryan and make sure that he was mentally stable, which was, apparently, not the case.

"I never liked oatmeal," Ryan said in an uncharacteristically quiet voice. All he could think of when he thought of oatmeal were those cold days when William made his stupid oatmeal and covered it in all kinds of repulsive sweeteners and shoved it in Ryan's face and ate it all over the house and made so much that their whole home smelled like instant oatmeal and he would freeze the leftovers and there were those hot days when William would eat frozen oatmeal or defrost his oatmeal and drink it with ice cubes in it and how their third major fight had been when William had tried to feed room temperature oatmeal to Dottie and Ryan hadn't approved. Ryan had never liked oatmeal, but man did he like it when it was only associated with William's silly, grinning face and, wait, nevermind, he didn't like it anymore.

"Listen, Ryan, I'm sorry. I've been a terrible friend through all of this and I'm sorry that this happened and you didn't deserve any of it, and I'm just so sorry." Jon's apologetic speech was obviously inadequate but mentioning anything about William probably wasn't in his best interest, although he knew that Ryan would have to speak his name at one point. Yet Ryan was more relieved than ever that Jon had broken through the awkward and bitter barrier that they had been dealing with for far too long.

"It's okay," he mumbled, rubbing Dottie's head. Dottie had made it through those three months with a smile on her face, only sometimes missing the other human that had used to live in the house, and only sometimes wishing that Ryan would take her for a long walk or play with her. Yet Dottie was patient, because that's how she had to act for the benefit of her owner, and because there wasn't anything else she could really do.

"I think having someone else here is going to help you." Ryan bit back a sarcastic retort, and instead just nodded. Ryan's odd willingness to forgive Jon and try to have a conversation with him was not overlooked by Jon, and he stayed later into the night, talking with Ryan, watching his old friend unwind from his tense temperament. They had gotten to the talking point of the ski goggles that Jon had sent Ryan for Christmas, and Ryan had admitted to chucking them out the window. So, somehow, Ryan ended up standing on his back porch, his right leg bouncing up and down with nerves as Jon looked for the ski goggles that were apparently fairly important to him. So the sense of relief that washed over him when he saw Jon returning with the ski goggles in his red hands, dripping with snow, was stamped out by Jon's proposal to "maybe go for a walk?" It was the time of night when suburban moms asked for their elderly teenaged sons home by on weekends, when the next morning was drawing close and there was nothing left of the sunset that had graced the rest of the family the night before. That night, fresh snow powdered the ground, but the clouds had taken their leave. Living in a city caused hazy lights to block out the main view of the stars, but they were up there... somewhere. So Ryan paused for a moment before replying to Jon.

"I need to find Dottie's leash."

It took them awhile, but Ryan wasn't about to actually go for a walk without his dog, and he had a substantial amount of fear that his dog was going to run off into the night and abandon him just like William had. Yet, Dottie was a million times more reliable than William could have ever been, and Ryan ended up finding Dottie's leash but then Jon reminded him that in order to use a leash, Dottie needed a collar. And of course, Dottie had had a collar but it had disappeared somewhere, and Ryan hadn't the faintest idea as to where it could have gone. So Jon assured Ryan that Dottie wasn't going to go anywhere, and would be fine. Not believing his friend in the least, Ryan nervously followed Jon and his dog out of the house.

Ryan hadn't really been out of the house in a long time. It was odd, it was definitely an odd feeling. It felt odd to be breathing fresh, crisp air that was cold and made his breath fog up in the air. It felt odd to feel snow soaking into his shoes, it felt odd to be unfamiliar, if only slightly, with his surroundings. Dottie was having the time of her life, running circles around Jon and Ryan, plowing through the snow. Her tongue was out, the biggest smile ever beaming on her little face. Her happiness caused Ryan to feel guilty, guilty that he hadn't once taken her for a walk in those months that he felt so sick and sad and he should have, he had adopted her and she was his dog and it was his responsibility to make sure she was happy and enjoying herself and he had to make it up to her somehow, he would take her out when it got warmer. He would take her to National Parks and go on long hikes with her, he swore to it.

Trying to push his guilt out of his mind, Ryan instead let a genuine smile grace his face when he saw how happy Dottie was, and then he smiled even more when he realized how much that little dog could mean to him and how she had kept him there and in the world and sane when he was going crazy up in the room that he scarcely left and she was barking at cars to make sure that he stayed in a state of mind that didn't completely disregard the existence of anything but his bed. It was cold, and Ryan had always liked the cold and he liked warmth too but he would rather be shaking and numb than sweating and hot, there was snow everywhere, on the ground, on houses, on street lamps, it covered the trees like sweaters, and Ryan thought of trees wearing sweaters and that made him smile and he was breathing he was breathing and living he was alive, he had made it, he had made it and he felt good and he felt good, he genuinely felt good for the first time in all of three months.

It felt good to feel good.


	2. Cigarettes & Saints

Ryan never wanted Jon to leave and that was a problem because Ryan was extremely lonely and he had just realized that he missed the company of other people and Jon had other things to do with his life than spend it sitting on Ryan's floor helping dry off Dottie's paws that were wet from the snow. It was some time past midnight, and Jon had finally gotten around to talking about the excuse that had brought him to Ryan's house in the first place; the person who would be moving into Ryan's house.

Ryan had decided that the top floor would be his, of course it would be, the middle floor would be no man's land, and the basement would belong to whoever this person was. Ryan had been completely clueless about what had been happening for the past three months, and had no idea when Jon had gotten his fantastic idea, but he explained it to Ryan in greater detail due to Ryan's confusion.

Ryan's house was his, but he made his money off of books and articles and things he wrote, and he hadn't been selling anything for a while, which did make sense. Ryan was, in a way, at this point, pretty damn broke. He did have a book published, something that he was actually rather proud of, but it hadn't really been selling that well for a while and it was really the only income he had left. Jon had decided that having another person in Ryan's house would help him get back into the swing of things, and make him realize that he needed a fucking job so he could keep his house. Maybe Ryan would even take to the person living in his basement and start, really, being alive again.

Although he didn't show it, partly because he didn't know how, Ryan was grateful that Jon was doing this. He wasn't really good at expressing his emotions, or hadn't really been good at expressing them since he hadn't properly had to for three months, but he tried by just telling Jon "thank you." He had used to be okay with things like talking to people, although not the most social person, Ryan did enjoy the company of other people, and was wondering what these months of solitude had done to him. Jon shutting the door at a louder volume than the rest of Ryan's muted evening alarmed Ryan, causing him to jump and half-land on Dottie's paw, which caused her to yap at him, which caused him to fall to the ground, his hands rubbing her paw and his words asking for her forgiveness. Dottie gave him a look that said "it was a mistake, it's fine," but Ryan felt even more guilty about not treating his dog right.

So the sound of Jon shutting the door echoed in his mind and more guilt piled up in his mind because Ryan had felt a lot of emotions over those past few months but guilt was something new, guilt was something he hadn't felt since somewhere in the middle of September where he had convinced himself that everything was his fault, he was sure that he had done something wrong and he had wished that every single "I love you" that had been spoken under that roof had never been spoken at all and then he had fallen deeper into his depression.

Now he felt empty.

Sitting on the floor with Dottie, everything became overwhelming and he realized- he realized that his life had been ruined. Everything he had once loved, everything that he had felt passionate about, all of it had been taken away from him and there was nothing he could have done about it, there was nothing that could have prepared him for it but now he was considering if he could have done things differently, if maybe he could still be in love with someone who loved him back at that exact moment if he hadn't reacted like he had. He had let go of the idea of being anything at all anymore, and now responsibilities were hanging over him and he had to get himself in the right mindset again, but what if he couldn't? What if he never got over the brown haired, brown eyed boy who had changed his life so drastically? Ryan didn't sleep that night, instead he sat in the dark on the floor of his living room and over thought his life.

What had he ever done to deserve this? What had he done to earn feeling empty and hollow at 1:30 in the morning on the living room floor because he couldn't be bothered to get up and go to his room and how had everything gone so wrong so fast and why had all of this happened? Why hadn't he been enough?

It was sometime in the late afternoon when Ryan finally was forced out of his hollow daze of self-pity and misery, and, like always, it was all Dottie's fault. Like any dog would, she had to pee, and had been trained not to do it in the house, so her solution to this problem was poking Ryan with her paws and whining a decent amount. Eventually, after staring blankly at his dog for a good amount of time, Ryan finally got up.

"Just shut up!" He shouted, his voice foreign in the otherwise silent house. Dottie, who had been whining and yapping, hesitated for a second, before deciding to go absolutely crazy. Her barks filled the house, and Ryan ran his hand through his hair, feeling the guilt rush back because he shouldn't have yelled because Dottie was his dog, and there was nothing that she could do about her owner not letting her out to pee.

"Okay, okay, we'll go. We'll go for a walk." The word "walk" resonated with Dottie, and her angry barks soon merged into happy ones, and she quickly forgot about whatever grudge she was trying to hold against Ryan for yelling. The previous night, Jon had been with him and Ryan had sort of been in a daze because he hadn't had any human interaction for the longest time, and he was ablaze with gratitude for Jon's existence, so he felt like going outside for a little while with Dottie not on her leash wouldn't be a huge problem. But he was all alone again, and he needed to find her leash because there was no way in hell she was leaving the house without being attached to Ryan. He didn't know why he was so paranoid about something as trivial as a leash, but he was and he was upset about it so he told Dottie to hold on and went on a hunt for the leash.

Ryan sort of felt like he was proving something that he didn't need to prove to William right then. William had never, ever, yelled at Dottie, and had always scolded Ryan for even raising his voice at the dog. Yet she was Ryan's dog, not William's, and even though they both took care of her, both of them knew that she was mainly Ryan's dog and Ryan could do what he wanted with her. Which then lead to one of their proper domestics which had been rare until things had started going wrong, but it had all been because William had tried to give the poor dog oatmeal and Ryan had ran in and started shouting and William had shouted back because Ryan had been being irrational but it wasn't irrational it was fine and Ryan should have known right there and then that William didn't respect him or his feelings.

But he didn't realize it and he didn't know it and he should have but he didn't because he was in love and he had fallen asleep that night curled up against his boyfriend's warm body after apologies had been exchanged and their row had been long forgotten.

And then there had been their leash fight.

William had believed Dottie didn't need a leash one day when they were hiking around a park. Ryan had reluctantly agreed but only because the sun was out and they were in a forest and everything smelled like leaves and trees and he hadn't had the feeling that he was going to lose his dog that day. Only a few hours later, Ryan had been having a full on panic attack because William had said that Dottie didn't need a leash and she had chased after a fucking squirrel or something and she was gone she had disappeared to somewhere and William was looking for her but he wasn't finding her he hadn't found her and Ryan had almost started crying and then she had been there, looking at him with one of her expressions that read "why are you freaking out? I'm right here!" Ryan had carried her all the way back to the car, despite her struggles, and had ignored William for the rest of the day. Since then, Dottie had always worn a leash.

Ryan was angry, throwing things around and scaring his poor, poor dog who had been through more than Ryan and William had put together and Ryan was fed up.

"We'll just go to the backyard, alright? I'll get you a new leash," Ryan promised his dog, who seemed to nod with understanding. Ryan stormed outside, his bare feet already freezing from the icy deck beneath him. Dottie took joy in being outside for the second day in a row, and ran around the small backyard with a sense of elation that Ryan longed for. After Dottie got to pee and rub her face in the snow for a good amount of time, Ryan's feet made their final protest. Bringing the dog back inside, Ryan made his way upstairs with numb feet and a ridiculous idea set in his mind.

That ridiculous idea involved him walking down the sidewalk in a pair of worn out boots that were doing a semi-decent job to prevent him from slipping on the icy cement. The sky was grey, threatening rain and Ryan had never been so happy to think of the possibility of it raining. Rain had been one of the most beautiful things that nature had to offer, and Ryan had never forgotten the time when he had asked William if they could go walk in the rain, and William had replied with "there's nothing beautiful about the rain." So Ryan had looked up synonyms for rain because he wanted to write about it, and had re-discovered the word "cloudburst" that was such a beautiful, whimsical word. So he had written about the rain while it poured down outside and enjoyed that day, even though William had spent it wishing that the sun would come out.

He had a few notes of cash in his pocket, and a desperate want to get what he needed. He went to the animal hospital first, giving the workers there dull smiles as he made his way into the shop. They had toys, food, leashes, collars, and brands of medicine that were okay to give without checking with doctors. Ryan wondered what Dottie's favorite color was. William had always said it was red, but Ryan thought that Dottie thought that red was too striking and bright, and that pink was a softer, prettier version of the same color that worked just as well. So he bought her a soft pink leash and a bright yellow collar that reminded him of spring and better times. Then he went over to the toy section and spent far too long picking out the perfect toy for her. He decided on a monkey-like chew toy with long brown hair that reminded him of William.

Then, with the bag from the animal hospital in his hands, Ryan made his way farther downtown. The bright red and white colors of CVS pharmacy flashed at him, and he walked inside with his head down because he was headed back to being self-destructive and maybe going up to the desk and asking for a pack of Marlboro cigarettes was the final thing he had to do to say "fuck you, I'm doing what I want" to William because he had to let go. And maybe smoking a pack of cigarettes was going to get him headed on the right track, as wrong as it sounded. But he bought much more than one pack, and he knew that he wouldn't be smoking his way through any of them. So then he went to Rite-Aid and 7-11 and bought many more red packs of cigarettes that he really didn't need to smoke because he was stupid and had a sort of idea and he hardly ever acted on his ideas anymore, but he seemed to be acting on one as he walked home, all of the cigarette packets spilling out of the bag from the animal hospital.

Ryan debated taking Dottie for a walk once he got home, but went against the idea when he reflected on the concept of having to go back outside. Taking off his shoes and subjecting himself to Dottie's face-licking regimine, he pulled out the chew toy that resembled William and tossed it on the floor next to her, which would distract her momentarily so he could be downstairs on his own. Downstairs had been William's "office space," with Ryan's designated beat up brown couch in the corner, Dottie's bright red dog bed near the edge of the couch, and all of William's bookshelves and things surrounding the desk that took up the major part of the room. Ryan had noticed that the desk was sort of shaped like a bean, so it had appropriated the nickname of "the bean desk."

Ryan had spent many nights down on that same couch, listening to William type and sigh and ask for some sort of guidance with his work while Ryan did his own work, writing whatever he was working on that day. Some of his happiest times spent in that house were down in the basement, but now he couldn't look at anything down there without thinking of William and god the whole place smelled like him and Ryan felt a sort of terrifying need to douse the whole place in lighter fluid just to do away with all of the memories.

Instead of doing even more damage to things that were important to him that he just lost sight of in the heat of his anger, Ryan instead decided to make another "burn pile" of William's things that he couldn't bear to deal with in his life. Ryan was probably enjoying himself more than he knew that he should, but this escapade was backed by the fact that Ryan would get to burn all of these things and Ryan didn't know what he liked so much about lighting things on fire but he sort of felt like burning things were destroying them for good, because what could you do with a pile of ashes? 

Throwing something away meant that it was still out there, somewhere in the world. Burning it was a trifle more dramatic, anyways, and Ryan liked the heat of the flames licking at, or near him because it felt dangerous and the blaze seemed to taunt him by saying "I could hurt you almost as much as you're hurting the metaphorical sense of this person right now." So maybe Ryan got a bit into the act and maybe he liked to think the flames said things like that with a sense of poise and education, but that didn't really happen and Ryan honestly just liked destroying things that destroyed him.

"Cigarettes destroy you."

William's quote echoed around Ryan's mind as he climbed back up the stairs, satisfied with the pile of belongings in the basement that he would make sure to burn whenever he didn't have art to make. William had never liked Ryan's smoking habits, and had always forced him to leave the house whenever he smoked. William had justly tried to get Ryan to stop smoking by hiding his cigarettes, throwing them out, and at some points making long speeches about the fact that Ryan was going to die early due to the smoke that he inhaled on a regular basis. So Ryan had stopped. And his smoking hadn't gotten to a point where he craved the feeling of a cigarette between his lips, but he missed the feeling from time to time when he really thought about it. So he lit up with the pink lighter that he had gotten because red wasn't Dottie's favorite color and smoked a cigarette as he wrote a page on his stupid fucking typewriter about cigarettes.

Dropping ashes onto the keys of the typewriter, especially aiming for the "F" key, Ryan finished typing out his paragraphs and didn't even stop to read them because he had gotten another idea and it was an idea that he would look back on and feel stupid about later but nothing really seemed stupid to him anymore at that point, so he decided to go through with it.

He hadn't been intending on smoking his way through his multiple packets of cigarettes, and he realized for a moment that he was totally hotboxing his room except that he wasn't smoking weed, and that his room was going to reek of smoke for quite a while. Disregarding that interrupting realization, Ryan emptied out his cigarette packets and grabbed a roll of tape out of the collection that lined the right side of his room. Yes, Ryan collected the yellow Scotch rolls of double sided tape simply because they were helpful and there was always some sort of reason to use it. In this case, he was using it to line his walls with cigarettes. It was a stupid sort of risks that ridiculous artists took to get some sort of point across, but Ryan felt like it was keeping William out. William would never haunt a room filled with cigarettes, and Ryan finally felt confident when he opened his window, letting all the smoke and his previous worries about his room and its correlation to William Beckett out into the biting January air.

-

1/14 - Cigarette

"You were, and possibly still are, a cigarette burning away and tempting me. You kept me awake at night when the hazy orange burning end o. you stopped me .rom going to sleep because I was a.raid that you were going to light everything on .ire yet I didn't know that you were going to do so much more than that. Whenever I pressed you to my lips and breathed you in, nicotine rushed into my body and gave me a .eeling o. bliss that I knew would end .ar too soon and I knew that every breath I took o. you brought me one breath closer to the end o. us.

So maybe I stopped breathing sometimes because I knew that things wouldn't last .orever but it was as i. I didn't have a choice and you were breathing in .or me and then you were snu..ed out and done and dead and gone and the tobacco and the good .eeling had .aded out and all that was le.t were dirty ashes that I didn't want to clean up. And there were ashtrays everywhere but I let the ashes seep into every single part o. my li.e and they're still there and my whole house smells like smoke and you're everywhere I go and some nights I wish that you were still burning and some nights I wish I had stomped you out be.ore I could have taken the .irst breath."


	3. Natures

The doorbell was ringing and it was eight in the fucking morning.

Ryan was going to fucking kill Jon, if it was Jon, but there was really no one else it could be because Jon was the only person who would have the audacity of showing up at his house at eight in the morning and Dottie wouldn't stop barking and Ryan fell out of bed and hit his hip hard on the floor and that morning hadn't started well. Wondering how long his hip was going to hurt for, a worry that often plagued the minds of aging women, Ryan snatched another cigarette off of his wall, lighting up, and proceeded to wander downstairs.

Ryan had been chain smoking cigarettes that he swore he wouldn't smoke because they were protecting his room from a nonexistent threat mainly because he was hungry and wasn't in the mood to go out and buy himself some food. Having something in his mouth, whether it be a cigarette or a fingernail being bitten down to its respective finger, seemed to help with the hunger hanging over him, so he kept smoking and biting his fingernails. Leisurely making his way to the door while coming up with what he was going to say to Jon, Ryan patted Dottie's head with loving care, disregarding the fact that she didn't like the cigarette smoke that had become all too familiar in that house.

Ryan opened the door, starting off with-

"Jon, it's eight in the fucking morning and-" He cut off when he realized that Jon was actually not Jon and the guy standing at the door was definitely not Jon Walker. Ryan shut his mouth on his cigarette, bringing his fingers up to it and taking a long drag. He took a massive step back, sending Dottie scrambling around his feet.

"And you are....?" He asked, his hands already shaking because he didn't like talking to people who showed up at his house at eight in the morning without any notice. Lowering the cigarette in his trembling fingers to his side, Ryan stared at the guy standing in his doorway. "Either come inside or go, make up your mind." So the guy stepped inside, hesitant and obviously feeling unwelcome. It was snowing lightly, and Ryan stared outside for a moment before realizing that he could stare outside and he nearly yelled it though he shouldn't need to because it wasn't Jon who knew about all his little pet peeves, but the door was open and-

"Shut the door!" The guy closed the door right away, looking insulted and sort of terrified.

"I'm Brendon. I'm moving in...? You don't remember?" Ryan remembered, but just hadn't expected someone to show up that early in the morning, especially not someone who didn't know how to shut doors behind them. Or maybe especially people who wore shorts when it snowed and had pathetically large collections of friendship bracelets and chewed gum in an obnoxious way that was fun to imitate and had hair that was too short to rival a particularly big forehead.

"Yes, I remember." Ryan didn't say anything else following that, and brought the cigarette back to his lips, unknowingly having Brendon watch his every move.

"Fine, I'll talk." Ryan began, not knowing that they were debating who was going to speak first, although it had been sort of exchanged between them by the way they half raised their eyebrows at each other past curious stares. "I have rules." Brendon was trying to keep a casually interested look on his face, but hearing that the person he was going to live with had rules really wasn't what he was looking for.

"I'm on the top floor, you're in the basement, we share the middle, yes?" Brendon nodded, twisting at one of the many bracelets on his wrist. "If you come up to my floor you'd better have a damn good reason. No going in my room without permission."

"What if it's like... an emergency?" Brendon asked timidly, almost terrified of what Ryan's response would be.

"It's only an emergency if it's something that might threaten your life that you can't deal with by yourself." Ryan said bluntly. He hadn't meant to be so cold and matter-of-fact to the nervous guy standing in his doorway, but he had felt so empty and emotionless for the longest time that he wasn't comfortable with opening up to people and showing them kindness anymore unless they were Jon because Jon was never going to abandon him and if he ever did then that would be the day that Ryan would never, ever pull himself back up when he fell down. But Brendon wasn't Jon and he wasn't William either, so Ryan decided to treat him like he would treat an acquaintance that he barely knew, with a sort of indifferent respect that he had received back for the most part.

"Other than that," Ryan continued, "those are basically my rules. Pretty simple. Treat my dog with utmost respect. If you so much as give her one dirty look, I am throwing your ass all the way back to wherever you came from." Brendon nodded vigorously, giving Dottie a nervous half-smile that 7th graders sometimes gave to figures of authority who worked in their school. Ryan was about to turn around and head back up back to his room to continue with his sleeping, but he realized that he had forgotten something.

"Oh, and I'm Ryan."

Wondering if he had spoken the words mysteriously and casually enough, Ryan rushed up the stairs with Dottie at his heels. He felt sort of stupid and excited because there was a new person in his house, and although he instinctively found himself needing to hate this new person, Brendon didn't seem like the easiest person to hate. Which was saying something, because Ryan was a prize-winning grudge holder and had been told by many people that he was extremely intimidating. Even though it was still sometime near eight in the morning, Ryan felt too awake to go back to sleep, so he talked to Dottie while pacing around the room. After a while, he got sick of the sound of his own voice and Dottie was sick of all the cigarette smoke in his room so he let her back downstairs and paused for a moment; listening

Brendon was singing.

Ryan was certain that the front door was hanging open judging by how Brendon's voice faded out and returned back into the house while he sang, and Ryan assumed that he was bringing his things inside. A stolen shopping cart was Ryan's best bet as to where Brendon was keeping all of his things, though he was also certain that that was illegal, but all of his thoughts were far too curious and he wanted all too much to just go downstairs and see what Brendon was doing. Anxiousness wasn't an emotion he had ever really experienced too often, but he was really worried about what Brendon was doing and bringing into his house. Ryan's house. Even though it was his house, a third and a half of it didn't belong to him alone anymore, and he had to have a reason to go downstairs.

At a somewhat odd pace, he descended the stairs unevenly and rounded the corner to see that the door was, in fact, fully open. Trying to pretend like that didn't bother him, Ryan watched as Brendon dragged a gigantic bedazzled black trash bag in the door, singing lightly under his breath. The singing stopped as suddenly as it had started, and Brendon balked and stared at Ryan.

"I'm just, uh, bringing my stuff in. Y'know." There was hardly anything left of the cigarette, and Ryan, who was almost dreadfully eager to start some form of conversation, spoke.

"D'you smoke?" 

A wrinkling of his nose and a quick shake of his head was enough to tell Ryan that Brendon was going to be just like William on the premise of cigarettes, so Ryan put it out and wandered into the kitchen, pleased when he heard Brendon's footsteps behind him.

"I don't smoke.... tobacco." Brendon said in a somewhat awkward fashion, leaving Ryan to find out what he did smoke.

"Weed, then?" Ryan asked, met with an uncertain nod and a little half smile. "Do you have good stuff?" And then Brendon really nodded, grinning a bit.

"I used to grow it." He admitted, smiling wider. When his mouth was open, he seemed to chew his gum louder but that way Ryan could smell it and it smelled nice. It smelled like berries and the summer time and everything good in the world, and Brendon was blowing it in a big pink bubble in front of his face. Before it could pop, he sucked it back in and Ryan heard the gum crackle in his mouth.

"Did you get in trouble? That why you're here?" Brendon laughed out loud, a nice loud laugh with the feel of actual happiness put into it. He shook his head then, not providing Ryan with an answer of any kind, just giving him another sly little half smile that was awfully aggravating and wanted Ryan to smile along with him.

"What were you singing?" Ryan continued with his questions, asking a more casual one this time. Brendon blushed for real this time, and muttered the answer under his breath.

"Rainy Day. By Coldplay." He bit at his lip and watched as Ryan giggled.

"Coldplay?" Brendon was immediately on the defense, yet still smiling.

"Coldplay is amazing." William had never liked Coldplay either, and Ryan finally found a difference between the brown haired boy standing in his kitchen and the brown haired boy off standing who knows where in the company of who knows what.

"Coldplay," Ryan began in a condescending tone, "is terrible." Brendon scoffed, his gum chewing amped up a few decibels.

"Fine, then, who do you listen to?" Ryan paused for a long moment, trying to think of someone, anyone, that he had listened to at some point in his life.

"Joy D-" Brendon laughed again, and Ryan couldn't help but love the sound of it. It had been too long since anyone had properly laughed anywhere in that house, especially people laughing because of a conversation, laughing because of themselves.

"I'm going to go shopping," Brendon announced, cutting off the conversation after Ryan's first words. Ryan shrugged, trying to add some apathy back into his persona but he had already let too much slip and Brendon knew it. "Would you like to join me?" Brendon asked casually, earning a quick head-shake from Ryan.

"You woke me up, I need to get my sleep back." Ryan announced, trying to sound angry but it was hard to be angry at someone who smelled so nice. Brendon nodded, the sly little smile on his face not going anywhere at all.

"Right then, I'll see you later."

Later ended up being far later, because Ryan had a mini-panic attack when he realized that he had no music to listen to because he had no laptop or phone or anything, and the only source of music he had was that damned record player that had belonged to William down in the basement. Ryan didn't know why it had been left behind, but it had, and there were records that played sounds of absolute nostalgia on them that Ryan couldn't bear to listen to and there were a few Radiohead records down there that he could play and actually enjoy, and an old Sum 41 one that brought his memories back to his junior year of high school. Brendon had come back at some point, and had been crashing around down in the basement for a good amount of time. Ryan had listened to that for a bit, wondering if Brendon actually seriously listened to Coldplay un-ironically. He was wondering about Brendon far too much, and took the closing of the front door as the perfect opportunity to go find out about him.

Ryan slipped down the stairs like a snake, almost as snakelike as Pat fucking Kennedy, and wondered for a second why he wasn't wearing socks because the floors were wooden down on the main floor, and he could slide that way. Dismissing the thought about socks, but not about Pat Kennedy who was a terrible person and didn't deserve any job whatsoever, Ryan rushed to the basement, not wanting Brendon finding him looking through his things. Which he wasn't, anyways, it was obvious that the only reason he was down in the basement was because he was checking if the record player still worked.

Obviously.

Except he forgot about the record player as soon as he got downstairs because it was nice. The first thing that hit Ryan was the smell, it smelled like berries. Not real berries, fake berries that people try to replicate into the flavor of the Trident brand berry gum that Brendon chewed. It smelled good. And it felt good, too. It was warm, it was always warm in the basement, which rightfully pissed Ryan off because heat was supposed to rise but the top of the house where Ryan resided was always freezing cold, and the basement was always a nice sort of warm. It wasn't fair, but Ryan had grown used to the cold up in his room, and acted accordingly to counter it. As Ryan made his way further into the basement dwelling, he realized that Brendon had actually gone to Bed, Bath, and Beyond or something because he had gotten actual stuff.

There was that trash bag in the corner of his room, one that had been actually and physically bedazzled. A big "S" was done in glittery plastic stones along the side of the bag, and it lay half-empty on the floor, stuff scattered around it. There was a cheap book-case thing sitting against the back wall, next to where Ryan's piano sat. Brendon hadn't mentioned the piano, and Ryan wondered if he knew how to play. The old bed in the corner, that had sat as just a shitty mattress from god knows where, now had blankets and sheets on it. The blankets had spacey designs on them, and looked like they were made for kids. Ryan supposed they were, as kids things were always cheaper. The headboard was covered in packs of gum.

That almost made Ryan smile, but he heard footsteps heading down the stairs and basically threw himself across the basement, finding himself lying on top of one of William's records down on the floor underneath the record player.

"Ryan?" Brendon was back from wherever he had gone; his hair was damp from snow and he really was wearing shorts, something that he should probably change. Shorts were not healthy in snowy weather. Ryan had rolled off of the carpet of records, and instead just lay on the floor, holding up one in front of him.

Unknown Pleasures. Ryan could almost hear Brendon's laugh before he got to finish saying "Joy Division." He hoped he had cracked the record.

Brendon had walked over, and looked down at Ryan's form on the floor.

"Do you like spaghetti?"

Ryan did, in fact, like spaghetti, and enjoyed it when Brendon made it because one, he hadn't eaten proper food in a very long time and two, it was just plain good. Brendon had gone and re-stocked the kitchen, which Ryan was extremely grateful for. Brendon had made a proper dinner for them, apparently he worked some sort of cooking job, and Ryan ate it like he hadn't eaten for years. It wasn't like Ryan wasn't grateful that Brendon had gone out and re-stocked the kitchen and filled up part of the physical emptiness in Ryan's house, because he was, but the only way he knew how to express it was by washing all of the dishes and cleaning up while Brendon softly hummed to himself and messed with his bracelets. Ryan had eyed them all through dinner, wondering how they hadn't gotten miraculously covered in pasta sauce judging by the way Brendon dangled his wrists over his food.

So Ryan cleaned in silence, almost wishing that Brendon had insisted to clean but sullenly knowing that this was his responsibility, for once. Brendon's humming was starting to drive Ryan out of his mind, and he recognized that as something else that William had never done.

"Wanna go to Target?" Brendon asked out of nowhere, stopping his humming to speak and then proceeding to snap his gum. This proposition startled Ryan, and one of the plates he was cleaning slipped from his hand.

"Target?" He asked, clearing his throat. Keeping his back to Brendon was much easier than speaking to him face to face, something that Ryan had always had trouble with.

"Yeah. Y'know, the store-"

"I know what Target is," Ryan replied coldly, moving on to dry the dishes. Brendon fell silent, probably playing with his bracelets again. "Sure," Ryan added, his voice edging towards silence.

"Cool." Ryan wasn't sure what was so cool about going to Target, and he was almost shocked that Brendon had used that term because he hadn't heard anyone use it in forever. He finished the dishes and reluctantly turned around, seeing Brendon blow a big wobbly raspberry colored bubble in front of his face.

"Now?" Ryan asked, sort of wishing he hadn't said yes in the first place, because Brendon wasn't Jon and Brendon wasn't going to talk to him like Jon did or take him on walks at midnight in the snow, no, Brendon was going to drag his ass to Target and probably attempt to make Ryan smile. 

"There's no better time!" Brendon exclaimed, making Ryan roll his eyes.

So they went, with Brendon driving in Ryan's shitty car, because he supposedly didn't own his own respective vehicle. The heat was broken in Ryan's car, a red Honda Civic that William had made fun of countless times. Brendon didn't complain, even though frost had formed on the seats, and he dangerously bounced his knee up and down as they drove. Everything was going fine, with Brendon humming in between snapping his gum and bubble-blowing interludes, while Ryan sat and nervously twisted his hands around until they stopped. Exhibiting even more dangerous driving behaviour, Brendon actually stood up to the best of his ability in the car, Ryan actually losing his mind over whether his feet would slip and hit the pedals, to see what was going on. And he did.

"Motorcade. Fucking police, stopping everything twenty minutes before anything starts." Ryan mumbled a statement that must have agreed with Brendon's words, and watched in fear as Brendon's knee bounced up and down so fast that it almost started to blur. An awkward silence filled the car, and Ryan stared longingly at the empty space where his radio had been. Brendon attempted to blow a bubble, but failed, leading the gum to shoot out of his mouth at an alarming speed and hit the dashboard. He snatched it off and stuck it back in his mouth before Ryan could say anything, and the silence seemed to deepen in awkwardness.

"It's co-" Began Brendon, but Ryan shut him down.

"You're wearing shorts." Brendon had absolutely no excuse to complain when he was wearing shorts, after all, it was winter time. So Brendon shut his mouth and upped the velocity of his knee bouncing and gum chewing until Ryan felt like he was going to fall out of his own head. Brendon was exhibiting the sort of habits that Ryan would end up using in some story of his, but having to deal with them in person was absolutely infuriating, and Ryan was absolutely done.

"Whoa!" It was an ugly sound, shot out of Brendon's mouth and then his hand shot out to pull Ryan back but he had already hopped out of the car, wondering how much more interesting the night could get if he had properly slammed the door into the side of the car next to him. After all, Ryan would be the one to pay for the damages, so maybe it would be some sort of exciting.

Ryan forgot all about the damage he wanted to cause everyone when he placed his feet on crackly ice and stopped to breathe. Though he was surrounded by a cacophony of honking horns and could physically feel the annoyance of other people, he was amazed at how much he liked the feeling of all these people being angry, angry at different things and maybe even being angry at him, but all being angry in some way. Ryan was going through a period of intense inspiration, and nearly got his foot ran over by the car he had been tempted to slam the door into when things started moving again.

Brendon didn't say anything as Ryan dropped back into the car, and Ryan realized that he had stopped bouncing his knee.

"Do you like mac n cheese?" Brendon asked out of nowhere, flicking the turn signals and windshield wipers and everything else like a little kid trying out a new toy. As the car sprayed countless amounts of windshield cleaner fluid onto the back windshield of the car, Ryan replied with a simple "yeah."

So they got to Target, and Brendon immediately went looking for the mac n cheese. Ryan had gotten himself a shopping cart, always an exciting addition to a life, and was having a grand old time running it down the empty aisles, which were most of them. It might have been around midnight but the Target ran twenty four hours so it didn't matter to either of them. Brendon had disappeared off to somewhere, and Ryan was filling the shopping cart with different kinds of canned soup and tomato sauce because they all rattled when he ran with them. The two were acting like children, but neither cared about that either because, after all, they were having fun. Brendon had showed up again, because Ryan had heard him singing from aisles over. Weezer was playing over the tinny speakers and Brendon's face was all lit up, his arms filled with boxes of mac n cheese. Dumping all of them into Ryan's shopping cart, he grinned, fingers working at an imaginary guitar in his arms. The way he wiggled his shoulders and tossed his head made Ryan not want to quickly glance away from him for once, and that sort of terrified Ryan.

Not that he was scared of liking someone, but then maybe he was. Maybe he was just scared of everything changing, even if it was for the better.


	4. Cutting My Fingers Off

Being basically unemployed had its perks and its disadvantages, and Ryan wasn't sure which one Brendon was. It was odd to wake up to hear someone moving around downstairs, and Ryan had almost pissed his pants that morning when he thought someone had broken into his house, or something. Being the ridiculously forgetful person that he was, Ryan had fallen out of bed, hit his hip again, and scrambled downstairs with Dottie at his heels to end up yelling at someone who he recognized.

Ryan's voice had sort of started to yell but his voice had cut off in that weird choppy way and Brendon didn't even look at him because he was just that cool. And being just that cool meant that Brendon was sitting on the counter with a laptop on his feet and a bowl of cereal in between his knees, which were bent up near his chin. He had barely lifted his eyes when Ryan came crashing down the stairs, and was trying to type and eat at the same time. Ryan paused for a while, gathering himself while Brendon slowly and calmly ate his cereal.

"Hi." The word drifted off into outer space, barely acknowledged by the guy sitting on the counter. He nodded, maybe in recognition of Ryan's existence, giving the keyboard one final smack before slamming the lid down with an alarming aggressiveness that Ryan wasn't used to.

"Haven't you got a job?" Ryan asked it and it came out sounding rude and snotty, because Ryan himself didn't have a job and he felt stupid asking a question that was meant to be asked to him. Brendon was acting jumpy and twitchy; spilling his cereal and tapping his feet. It felt odd to not hear the regular pop and snap of his gum, but the chewing of the cereal seemed to fill in that space.

"Yes, I have." Brendon said, not elaborating as he finished eating the cereal. Ryan hesitated, waiting at the edge of the counter. Brendon finished and rinsed the bowl angrily in the sink, and slammed it back onto the counter with enough force to crack it.

"Hey-"

"I have many jobs. And I've got to get to one now." Brendon almost seemed embarrassed about that, which Ryan supposed he understood. Brendon was upset in some way, agitation showing through all of his movements. Almost embarrassed himself, Ryan felt like running back upstairs to pull out the god forsaken typewriter and pouring his sorrows into sheets of ugly paper, but he stayed only for the sake of getting more questions in.

"What do you do?" Ryan asked, the question coming off as more of a statement. Brendon didn't have anything to distract himself anymore, and stood clear in Ryan's line of fire, twisting his bracelets around and around his wrist.

"I paint nails. Among other things." Ryan's eyes immediately went to Brendon's nails, which, sadly, not painted. Clean and pretty average looking, but not painted. Ryan wondered if he wished that they were.

"Cool." Stupid.

"I've got to go." And he went, not even hesitating after he spoke his words. Ryan watched him go with wide, curious eyes. Obviously, he was stressed about something, though probably that something was not his nail painting job. Ryan wondered what it would be like to paint nails all day. It wasn't a topic that he considered writing about, but it was a topic nonetheless. It wasn't that Ryan didn't feel inspired, which, honestly, he didn't, it was just that his typewriter was falling apart and he was just sad. It was kind of unfortunate. He had never asked to be sad, no, he had never asked for William to abandon him, and he had never asked for Brendon to show up in his house. And for a split second he was terrified because he didn't know what Brendon's last name was. It felt sort of as though a stranger was living in his house. Well, there was a stranger living inside his house. Jon had probably gone into the tunnels that lead into the sewers and asked the guys down there if they wanted a place to live.

And Ryan didn't know why he kept hating on Brendon, because it was useless and unnecessary, and then realized that he should change his tactic and hate on Jon because Jon was the one who had tried to replace William in the first place. It wasn't Brendon's fault that he needed a place to live.

So then Ryan got to thinking. If he wanted, he could subject Dottie to the fear of going back downtown to go to Jon's house. The idea of showing up unexpectedly at his friend's door to shout at him excited Ryan, and the temptation to do just that was growing. After thinking about it for quite some time, Ryan decided that he was going to Jon's house and that he wasn't going to take Dottie. Going downtown on foot was always an experience, and Ryan wasn't going to put his dog in danger.

Leaving the house was terrifying, as it always was these days. The way that everything in Ryan's life had changed so suddenly and so drastically was alarming, and he just wished that William had never even existed. He knew that he'd rather be simply lonely than lonely and depressed. As he walked down the street, Ryan considered if he was going to Jon's house simply for gaining some sort of attention. Well, of course he was. But then he stopped on the corner and breathed and thought some more because what if Jon wasn't home? What if he had someone over? What if he got just as mad back at Ryan? His anger was fizzling and dying and wobbling over the edge of if it was even worth it, but Ryan pushed it the smallest amount forward and took a deep breath that then fogged out into the air. He smiled. He had been needing to yell at someone for a long time, and he knew that Jon wouldn't mind too much. 

As he grew closer and closer to the horrible place that was Jon's apartment, Ryan grew more and more glad that he hadn't decided to take Dottie on his escapade because he knew that she didn't like yelling, though she had dealt with far too much of it, and Ryan was going to yell. Slamming his feet into the stairs as he climbed the chilly outdoor stairwell, Ryan reached Jon's apartment and turned situations around to end up being the person stamping their feet and watching their breath fog in cold air. So maybe Ryan's journey there was pointless, but he was there nonetheless, and was oddly pleased and surprised when the door opened.

A pair of bright blue eyes that definitely didn't belong to Jon Walker cautiously peered around the side of the door, and Ryan felt sort of miserable. The guy stared at Ryan and Ryan stared right back. He felt like he was facing off with Brendon again, waiting to see who would speak first.

"Are you selling something?" Ryan scoffed so loudly that it almost hurt his throat.

"No, I've been hired to kill you." The Guy's blue eyes widened and he almost looked scared.

"Sorry-" Then Jon appeared, shoving The Guy out of the way in a fashion that Ryan would later remark on as rude. Jon stared at Ryan, his expression unreadable. Along with the wrong sort of term in unreadable, his eyes looked dark and sort of angry. Of course, Ryan had walked all the way downtown and wasn't going to turn tail just because Jon had a stupid man in his house and Jon was upset about something.

"Why are you here?" Jon asked coldly, letting Ryan figure out that he was actually and properly mad for some reason. For some reason, he was losing the feeling of having to yell. Maybe he didn't have to yell. Maybe just talking in an angry voice would work out well enough. 

"You know him?" The Guy asked, looking back and forth between Ryan and Jon with a stupid dumb look on his face and his eyes goggling.

"Yeah," Jon mumbled, glaring at Ryan.

"Oh- I can go. I should. Yes. Sorry." Ryan wasn't going to protest that the guy was leaving, and he, surprisingly, didn't hesitate before ducking back inside the apartment to get his stuff, or something. So Ryan stood there like a political sign that no one wanted to see, and Jon stood there and glowered at him like the viewer of the political sign that no one wanted to see. So The Guy reappeared and quickly glanced at Jon, his gaze almost skirting him. Ryan took it that Jon and The Guy had a shaky relationship.

"Bye?" Said The Guy, hesitant and awkward. He seemed clueless and peppy and useless, a bit, someone who wasn't eloquent and didn't exactly know how to talk. Ryan supposed that he was the one who was supposed to be feeling awkward and out of place, but he was quickly convincing himself that he was there for a reason. And he was, after all, and in the end, The Guy had been interrupting Ryan and Jon, and not some other way around.

"I'll call you later," Jon replied, avoiding The Guy's eyes. Ryan took it that Jon and The Guy had a sad relationship. The Guy moved past Ryan before anything else could be sad, and Jon spun on his heel to march back inside of his apartment as soon as The Guy had departed. Jon didn't touch the door handle, so Ryan quickly followed him inside.

"Who are you to show up at my house uninvited and kick a guest out of my house?" Jon yelled, marching around his apartment like he was trying to prove some sort of point that Ryan just didn't seem to be understanding. Maybe he had lost an odd amount of brain cells since William had gone and abandoned him but Ryan was forgetting how ordinary life worked, and yeah, maybe he had interrupted Jon and whoever the fuck The Guy was in whatever the fuck they were doing and his one and only friend was upset and that was upsetting and really, Ryan didn't know what he was doing.

"I didn't kick him out." Was all he could say. Jon turned, his eyes furious and his face all drawn up.

"Well he left because of you." The "you" was all drawn out and swirled up in Jon's mouth, and Ryan made a face, and Jon sighed so loudly that Ryan felt like he was a high school geometry teacher.

"Who is he?" Ryan asked, trying to act semi-civil before he brought his own argument into the mix. Or maybe he just wanted some closure on this guy. 

"He's Spencer." So The Guy actually had a name. What a shocker. Admittedly, Spencer wasn't a bad name. There were worse names in the world, and although Spencer was a sort of yuppy name, it wasn't the worst one out there. And besides, Spencer (alias: The Guy) was pretty stupid, so the name kind of added an "My name makes me smarter than I already am but I'm not smart because I'm actually stupid" little thing to him. Ryan decided to attempt to stop hating him.

"But who is he?" Rephrasing questions like a suburban mom trying to extract information from her kid basically consisted of repeating a question with different emphasis on the words, which was Ryan's next tactic for retrieving information. Jon's anger seemed to be fizzling out, and the way he turned his head away when Ryan asked the question meant something.

"Oh my god!" Ryan exclaimed, and Jon whirled around again like he was just begging for something to bring the fighting back.

"You are not allowed to bring up my love life when you just drove the guy away!" Jon exclaimed, waving his hands around.

"Your love life?" Squealed Ryan, almost giddy with excitement from the idea of Jon actually dating someone. Jon was spinning around like a dreidel, obviously not knowing where to stomp around or who to look at.

"Why are you here?" Jon said, and it was in that moment when Ryan realized that he shouldn't have come and acting on impulse was stupid and there had never been anything wrong with staying inside the house. 

"I'm here to be mad at you for trying to replace William. I figured out your plan." The words dropped just like that and the ripples in the water finally hit Jon and an ugly scowl that looked like Johnny Bond's face to the extreme slowly crept into Jon's expression. And there had never been anything wrong with keeping his dumb mouth shut, either.

"You're mad at me?" Ryan didn't know how to reply. Jon opened and closed his mouth similar to the motions of a fish, and kept that ugly scowl on his face except that it kept getting uglier.

"You just come to my house, tell my- my guy that you're there to kill him, kick him out, and say that you're mad at me for helping you?" Again, Ryan would have to point out that he did not kick out Jon's "guy", and Spencer had, after all, simply left on his own accord.

"You aren't helping me." Ryan said simply except that it wasn't simple at all and it almost physically hurt him to realize what he had just said. It was always a strange thing, hurting others along with yourself when you said something bad. And it made Ryan feel like he had said so much more than those four words that stopped Jon from scowling and instead brought a wounded, almost betrayed expression onto his face.

"I was trying to. And if you want to kick Brendon out, go ahead. Now I'm kicking you out." Ryan hadn't gotten the fight that he wanted, and was now sure that he had never even wanted one at all. Hurting his friends was not his favorite thing to do, and Ryan didn't protest before walking out the door.

He slammed it behind him. Stupid, fucking, stupid as all hell. 

Although feeling as guilty as ever about leaving Dottie at home alone for a longer period of time, Ryan ended up wandering downtown due to his thinking and how many things he was writing inside his head. At that point, he wasn't afraid of where he was going and wasn't afraid of running into anyone except for maybe Spencer, which was highly unlikely. Besides, he was busy writing. It was always difficult when he was too lazy to get his words down anywhere but could write what could be equal to ten pages of perfect prose inside of his head. That was the thing about writing, even if he wasn't inspired at all, he was still always writing. As a kid, he had used to document his life with as much detail as he could fit into it.

"Ryan Ross slowly made his way down the street, breathing dry desert air and kicking dead leaves that had come from nowhere. Which was true, they had come from nowhere and maybe they hadn't come from nowhere because everything comes from somewhere, but these leaves had no purpose. He looked around, remarking to himself that there weren't any trees and it was mid-spring so there was no reason for any dead leaves to be hanging around. Maybe, he thought, there were aliens who thought it was fall and had dropped some dead leaves from their UFO."

That was the thing he always remembered, how when he was eleven years old he had convinced himself that he was going crazy and that aliens were slowly but surely invading the planet Earth. The counselor at school had called his dad and told him that he thought Ryan was trying to deal with a sort of loneliness by making up things to tell others to make him seem more interesting. And Ryan's dad had told the counselor, in some way or another, to fuck off, and then the counselor had left Ryan alone. Just like everyone had.

So maybe had been trying to cope with the disappointment of real life by writing out a more interesting future for himself in his head, but he was always too quick to deny it. Though he had grown out of hating himself and everyone around him with a burning passion that lead teachers to grow worried that he was going to kill himself or shoot up the school, or something, he hadn't grown out of writing in his head as a way to cope with everything. So he supposed that his drama with Jon counted as "everything." And there he was, stumbling around the streets of his big city, mumbling to himself and roaming his eyes over everything he could see. To an average passerby, Ryan supposed he could look a little crazy. Staying inside the house was never a bad thing. Ryan couldn't remember why he had even left.

And then a familiar face sort of flashed past his vision and Ryan was almost scared and ready to break out of his writing world to make a mad dash to get away from Spencer, last name unknown, but it wasn't Spencer. It was Brendon. Wearing shorts and an ugly white polo shirt, pulling at his bracelets. Who else would it have been? Brendon had stopped walking so Ryan did the same thing, after all, it would have been rude to simply walk past the guy who was living in his basement.

"What are you doing here?" Brendon asked, like the whole city belonged to him and Ryan was not allowed to be there.

"I'm walking. What are you doing here?" Ryan tried out Jon's sort of weird "yooouuu" sound, and decided that he didn't like it and was going to discontinue the use of it at that very moment. Ryan didn't understand a lot of the things Jon did, it was almost like Jon was his weird older brother who he fought with but was still close with but didn't always understand.

"I'm going to work. Speaking of work, haven't you got a job?" Brendon asked, bouncing on his feet a bit to keep himself warm. He was stupid for wearing shorts and a t-shirt smack dab in the middle of January. At least Ryan owned a jacket. He had been fighting the urge to casually go through Brendon's big bedazzled trash bag of magic, but knew that if anything was an invasion of privacy, that was it. Ryan wondered if Brendon's bracelets were a safety hazard for any of his jobs. They seemed like they weren't easy to take off.

"Yeah," said Ryan, and didn't elaborate. He finally dragged his eyes to meet Brendon's, bright but dark at the same time sort of brown ones. They were happy eyes. Nice eyes. And they crinkled a bit when Brendon smiled, and then he spoke, not his eyes.

"I'm moving back out if you don't have a job in two weeks." It didn't come out of his mouth sounding like a threat, but Ryan took it as one. It came as sort of a shock to Ryan because he would have told himself that he would be glad for Brendon to leave, but he needed help and he needed someone to help out with money and perhaps he was being selfish like that, like not wanting to pay his bills and not wanting to get a proper job, but it sort of made his heart and brain terrified because oh no, he couldn't be all alone again.

Not again.


	5. Luca

Dottie was a gift to the world.

Except for when she almost killed Ryan one evening, but that wasn't a big deal because he had been trying to feel what it might be like to be on the brink of death, but not really, and she had helped more than he had wanted.

Brendon had come home from work somewhat confused when Ryan hadn't been holed up in his room as he usually was, and had gone out to the backyard to see Ryan standing on top of a ladder in the middle of their small yard.

It was an odd sight, at least to Brendon, to see the tall brown haired boy standing with his back straight and his arms out like he was Jesus Christ himself. His eyes were closed. Brendon wondered if he was going to jump. Though, somehow, it had been the perfect picture of peace. Ryan's eyes were closed, but not all scrunched up like he was thinking. Just. Closed. The cold wind ruffled his hair, and a greyish lavender winter sunset barely tinted with hints of orange across the horizon was painted behind him. Brendon admired him like he was something in an art gallery, leaning against the side of the door like an art critic that he wasn't really at all, and observed the scene as if looking for individual brushstrokes and watching for the places where the color wasn't blended as smoothly as the rest of it, but no, everything had been painted perfectly and Brendon was watching a perfect picture where there were no messy brushstrokes and no fucked blending, just Ryan Ross going about his everyday life.

Brendon watched Ryan's feet shift on the edge of the ladder and had felt a small sense of worry twist in his stomach but wasn't worried about it because Ryan wasn't going to do anything stupid, but Brendon hadn't been thinking about Dottie. And there she was, dashing around under the feet of the ladder and Ryan was up there doing his thinking or whatever and Dottie was bouncing around like dogs do, excited to be outside, and then-

"Dottie!" It came out way too high pitched but Dottie dashed through the legs of the ladder, causing it to wobble but not fall, thank god, and Dottie ran up the stairs, her tongue hanging out and her eyes excited to see someone other than her weird master who had tendencies to stand on ladders at twilight.

When Brendon was done petting Dottie, he looked up to see Ryan at the bottom of his ladder, staring at the sky.

"Ryan?" He didn't reply for a moment and then a quiet-

"Yeah?"

"What were you doing?" Another silence, and Brendon wondered what the answer to this would be.

"Writing." That made absolutely no sense, but Brendon just fell quiet.

"Oh." Ryan scratched his head, his back still turned to Brendon. After they had ran into each other downtown, Ryan had seemed somewhat more subdued and had made a sort of obvious effort not to insult or try to apparently show his hatred for Brendon. Which was appreciated by Brendon, because he was overworked and stressed and not used to sleeping in a new place, but he had to deal with it. Because life consisted of dealing with things.

"Are you gonna come in?"

"Later." So Brendon shut the door after pausing for another long moment. He wasn't sure what he was waiting for.

Dottie cast him a mourning glance when she realized that Brendon wasn't letting her back outside, but he mumbled a quick apology and then made his way down to his room. He had been planning what he was going to do that night, and it was really very exciting. He was going to take a hot shower until the water ran cold, and then he was going to fall asleep. Maybe the next morning he would ask about whether or not Ryan owned a washing machine.

Yet none of that happened because when Brendon got downstairs, he realized that Ryan had been down there and had messed with his stuff. Although he couldn't remember exactly, he knew that Ryan had specifically said something along the lines of not entering each other's rooms without permission. And Brendon's little wooden carvings had been moved around, because he knew about where he had put them when he had unpacked them.

It was stupid, well, possibly the stupidest thing he had ever dedicated his time to, but it had made him a small amount of money in hard times and it was sort of fun, a bit. And he was hesitant about thinking that because, well, it was carving wood. It was stupid. It was an interest that Brendon could always imagine Ryan making fun of later on, especially since he had actually just gone through and looked at all of Brendon's carvings.

But it was just... easy. Easy like going for a walk in a park and coming back with a backpack full of sticks and broken logs big or small enough to carve and sitting on a ratty couch that belonged to a stranger and spending the night whittling the block away with a shitty pocket knife that made as many cuts in the wood as it did in the soft palm of his hand. As easy as setting up a blanket in the park and finding a quickly dying pen to scrawl prices on the back of a receipt found on the top of a brimming over trash can to set up, and as easy as counting dollar bills at the end of a long, miserable day when there was no money.

And no, carving stupid little designs into wood and carving ugly scars into his hands sure hadn't saved his life but it sure had gotten him back onto his feet, given him the smallest boost he had ever needed and there he was, alive and in a house with someone who might have been crazy but he was alive and okay and had more jobs than he had ever even dreamed of.

And things were really perfectly okay.

But if Ryan was going to do... this, go through his things and obviously and carelessly invade his privacy, then Brendon was finally going to say something about it because there was no way he felt comfortable with Ryan "Mental" Ross digging through his stuff while Brendon was at work. And Ryan didn't have a job

Which sucked, a lot, because Brendon had always been supporting himself, always himself, and now he was helping out some selfish fuck who had no idea what he was doing with his life and it sucked because Brendon had thought that this was going to help him but now he was paying even more money for someone who couldn't get their act together and just work. Yeah, Brendon knew that it wasn't that easy to just get a job but why else would Ryan be living in a big ass house that he somehow didn't have the money to pay for? That was what Brendon was wondering. And he didn't know how to bring up the topic of Ryan's unemployment again without being rude, but it was really getting on his nerves.

Somehow.

When Brendon went to take a shower, the water was already running cold. That was okay though; it was refreshing. When there was no warm water to shower with, which there hadn't been for a while anyways, he would spit out his gum and gargle freezing shower water and sometimes stand there until the water pressure ran down while thinking about what he was going to do. And it was warm down in the basement, which was interesting, as heat was supposed to rise, but he wouldn't have to worry about his hair physically freezing that night while he tried to work things out. So he took his cold shower, and took it with his socks on because it was sort of cool and stimulating to feel the icy water plaster his socks to his feet because it was just weird and awesome and he liked feeling his socks against his feet.

After he showered, Brendon looked around his room, because it really was his now, and wondered who had been there before him. There was a piano, a nice piano that was tuned and everything because that morning Brendon had played The Entertainer very quietly just to make sure it actually worked. All in all, he didn't think it was a bad room and even though he had put all of his things into it it still didn't feel... well, his.

It was warm and had his things in it and it was nice but it didn't feel his. It felt like it belonged to whoever had previously lived there, and he felt as though he was offending Ryan by staying there in a room that was almost a cemetery, it was like he was making his bed on someone's grave.

He didn't sleep well that night, which was never a surprise, and due to this, he spent his night chewing more gum until his jaw got sore and waiting for the sun to come back up. Not exactly a good plan for someone who was already under immense stress due to their job(s) and complained about not getting enough sleep who decided not to sleep simply because it was uncomfortable and somewhat awkward.

So soft light slowly began to filter into his room, and he very slowly and oddly came to realize that it was the weekend. That was another reason that he should have slept, but he still started off his morning by looking around his room, yeah, his, in a disconcerted fashion because he had probably lost a decent amount of brain cells with his appalling lack of sleep and never-ending passive anger for everything because he tried his hardest but nothing in the world seemed to want to work with him to make the burden of life a little lighter.

He stumbled up the stairs and was greeted by the scent of very, very strong coffee and Dottie's miserable face looking up at him. Brendon took a few steps into the kitchen and then realized that there was someone there.

Oh, no.

Ryan was talking to someone and there was another voice so it obviously wasn't himself. Dottie kept coughing and Brendon assumed that it was the coffee, so he petted her and sat himself down on the cold wooden floors while he listened to Ryan talk.

It didn't take long for their conversation to end, and Brendon heard the door shut and Ryan sigh. Brendon watched his bare feet walk back into the kitchen across the floor. That was annoying, Brendon thought, that Ryan didn't wear socks.

"You should wear socks." He said from his place on the floor.

"Holy shit!" Ryan gasped, clutching at his chest as if he had just been surprised by something or someone that was not Brendon Urie. Brendon had popped up from his position on the floor and was now leaning over the counter with a grin on his face while Ryan panted in faux shock at the proposition of the other person who lived in his house actually being in his house.

"Who was here?" Brendon asked, annoying himself by sounding oddly squeaky and too much like a little kid.

"My friend. Jon. Do you want some coffee? I made it to show him that I have my life under control." Brendon didn't want to say no to the coffee, he just wanted to ask why making coffee was equal to knowing what you're doing, except it smelled like Ryan had been casually burning it on the stove for a few hours so he just politely shook his head and hoped that it was an acceptable "no, thanks." Brendon paused for a moment, and looked at Ryan's weird ceramic mug, thing. With fish painted on it. A collection of fish.

"Why does making coffee make people think that you have your life under control?" Brendon asked, focusing on the mug. Was it a bouquet? Of fish?

"Because mature people drink coffee." Brendon wanted coffee, the non burnt variety, and Ryan was apparently immature.

"Is that a bouquet of fish?" Brendon asked, finally, because there really wasn't anything else that it could be but it was really what it looked like, and with Ryan's odd imagination, Brendon wasn't going to think that it wasn't.

"Yes!" Exclaimed Ryan, cracking a smile that died almost as instantly as it appeared. "Haven't you always wanted to see a fish bouquet? Just... fish. In a bouquet. I always thought it was weird but sort of amazing and intriguing, so I painted it. And I wrote a poem about it." Brendon paused and stared. Ryan wasn't an artist, not at all, Brendon knew that because he knew artists and yes all of them were different but Ryan had never displayed anything of the sort and maybe, by the way he talked and the way he stood on the edge of ladders and said he was- writing. He was a writer.

"Did you get a job?" Brendon asked, disregarding Ryan's fish bouquet information. No, instead he was going to act like a mom talking to her seventeen year old son over the summer.

"Well." Ryan started, and Brendon had given up on him right away. "I'm working on it. But it's going to happen. By Wednesday."

"By Wednesday," Echoed Brendon matter-of-factly, and resulted to crossing his arms over his chest.

"I'm going to get another dog." Ryan then said, as if it wasn't a major digression in their conversation. That statement seemed to upset Dottie, and she turned her long face up to Brendon with an almost pleading look on her face, a "please don't do this to me," expression that almost made Brendon melt.

"And you have the funds for this?" Of course he didn't, and he was expecting Brendon to pay for the extra food and the new toys and the leash and the collar and everything that Brendon didn't know that one needed to own a dog, while Ryan would just wave his "Wednesday" flag around in the air until Brendon packed up his things and moved out on that exact Wednesday.

"Of course. I always have the funds for a dog."

"But not for your own house." It was a sharp jab, but Ryan accepted it with a sort of sly grin.

"I'd say that dogs are more important than houses." If this was and always would be his state of mind, Ryan would end up homeless. With a dog. Or two, a dog or two that he couldn't feed or take care of and him and Brendon's past self would switch places and Brendon would find a single working job that paid him enough and would finally be rewarded for all the work he had done to get himself there, and Ryan would be begging on the street saying "Dogs are more important than houses."

They went to Starbucks before the animal shelter, where Ryan sat and pouted in the car while Brendon got some proper, overpriced, but proper coffee. Ryan had no reason to pout, seeing as his coffee had looked like tar and had somewhat the same consistency, and had snarkily asked Brendon if he had the funds for that when he returned to the car with nice smelling coffee that Ryan was obviously bitter about. Coffee wasn't more important than dogs, and would never be, but sometimes they ended up equal with each other and Brendon set the burning cup in the cup holder and vowed to drink the rest of it just a little later, because it would heat up the freezing car.

"Are you ever going to fix the heater in here?" Asked Ryan, curling his hands into fists and blowing on them to keep his hands warm. "Can I have a sip?" He continued, casting a mourning look that looked a lot like his dog's face at Brendon's coffee cup.

"Don't you have the funds for your own car and your own coffee?" Ryan fell silent and resulted to glaring out of the window while continuously blowing on his hands and cupping them around his face. It wasn't as if Brendon wasn't cold, because he was wearing shorts, but that was his own decision and his car was cold and he was cold but that was his decision, and Ryan should have worn gloves if he wanted to be warm

"Turn left up here." Ryan said in a hoarse voice. Brendon's numb hands hit the wrong signal, and windshield wiper fluid hit the windshield and almost immediately froze.

"Jesus shit!" Yelled Brendon, ignoring Ryan's snickers as he pulled over to the side of the road, flipping off the driver of the car behind him that had laid on the horn for quite a while before deciding to go around them. "You shut up." Brendon instructed Ryan, and twisted his body to crawl into the back seat of the car for a second. He came up with an empty plastic sandwich container, and hopped out of the car. It took all of his self control not to look inside the car at Ryan while he scraped the ice off the windshield with the flimsy plastic, and when he finally couldn't anymore, he realized that his coffee cup was in Ryan's hands.

It took about three seconds for him to throw himself back into the car and snatch the coffee out of Ryan's hands. The smug look hadn't gone anymore, and Brendon wanted to shout at him and tell him that he had absolutely nothing to be smug about.

"Fuck heating." And he drank the rest of the coffee right in front of Ryan's stupid face. They continued driving after that, and right before Brendon hit the actual turn signal, Ryan told him that the windshield was looking a little dirty.

When they finally got to the animal shelter, after about ten more minutes of passive insults and whining about the temperature, Brendon sat for a minute after Ryan got out of the car just to clear his head. Maybe it was just today, but Ryan seemed to be acting... weird.

In a way that he was talking, even if it was all about him and all snide, unnecessary remarks, but at least it was conversation. And at least he had some sort of personality, which Brendon hadn't been sure of when he had first arrived. There was some sense of humor there, too, and Brendon just wished that it wasn't so awkward because he didn't know what Ryan thought, but he was leaving on Wednesday if there was no job. At this point, Brendon wanted to stay so badly. He wanted to keep his jobs and keep his warm basement room, he wanted the angry conversations and behind the hand snickers, he wanted to sit on the kitchen floor and pet Dottie, he wanted the lack of warm water and he wanted the smell of burnt coffee filling the house in the mornings. He could get used to it. Just for a few months, maybe, if things got better then maybe he would re-think. Maybe in the future, well... he didn't know. He wasn't going to plan ahead, and thinking about the future was terrifying because it wasn't like everything would stay the same. He was an adult now, well, sort of. Twenty one was an adult, yeah, if he was old enough to vote and pay his own taxes and drink alcohol, then he was an adult.

For sure.

And it felt more that way than ever, finding his own housing and working all of his different jobs, doing nails and being a waiter and working odd hour shifts at the post office and Forever 21- it was enough. It was okay.

Ryan had ran inside as soon as he had exited the car, and Brendon realized why because it was warm in the animal shelter, with all the Christmas lights still up and 2007 pop music playing not too loudly through the speakers. There were a few other people in there, and Ryan was talking to someone at the front desk. Brendon walked up next to Ryan and listened to the sound of his voice but not the conversation. He liked Ryan's voice. It was deep, but not too deep, and had a sort of hoarse sound to it that wasn't raspy and cringey, just sort of scratchy in a calming way. Maybe it was the cigarettes, but it sure didn't make his voice sound bad. After a while, Brendon had been swaying back and forth as he zoned out and stared at a poster of techniques related to washing your cat, Ryan turned to him with a smile on his face and said.

"Let's find a dog." Brendon had never really been an animal person because he hadn't been around them too much, except for squirrels and stray dogs on the street downtown, but his short time spent with Dottie had not been unpleasant, and he was sort of excited to be able to chose a dog to adopt. They were lead into a room with a few little stall sorts of things in them. They were like cages but there were no tops but they were much bigger, and all the doors were open.

Lots of dogs were roaming around the room, and Ryan sat down in the middle of the floor and lay down. If that was his method of finding a dog, Brendon would respect that, but he was more interested in a direct method. As he smiled at certain dogs and twinkled his hands at them, one kept hanging around near his feet. The dog would jump out of the way whenever he stepped forward, but kept following him. Ryan had most likely gotten crushed by the sheepdog that was lying on top of him, but this little jack russell terrier, or that's what he looked like, wasn't hurting Brendon. Just hanging out.

After Ryan got out from under the sheepdog, Brendon timidly introduced the little dog at his feet to Ryan. After about twenty minutes of Ryan interviewing the dog with no reply, he agreed that this dog was acceptable. On the car ride to PetSmart, Brendon asked if they could call him Bogart.

When it came to buying him a leash and collar, Ryan insisted that the leash had to be turquoise. There was no other option. So they got him a lavender collar to match, it all looked very pretty and aesthetic together, and they brought him home to a very disappointed looking Dottie.

Ryan left the dogs to get to know each other and Brendon made his way down to the basement, saying something about sleep. It was odd that he drank coffee about an hour before he wanted to sleep, but everyone did strange things and Ryan didn't wear socks around the house so that was that.

That was that.


	6. Alibi

It was the guitar that did it, of course. The fact that he wasn't playing the piano when there was a perfectly good one downstairs, and the fact that both of the dogs were missing and were hanging out downstairs with him was even more insufferable because, fuck, heat was supposed to rise.

And it didn't.

Maybe the house was in some weird parallel universe or something, maybe it was upside down but looked right side up, or maybe all of the heating vents on the top floor had broken but something was definitely wrong with everything and the fact that Brendon was playing his own guitar and not the piano was getting on Ryan's nerves for unconventional reasons because it was the piano. William's piano.

And William hadn't known how to play the stupid thing and he had bought it and dragged it home himself; how, Ryan still didn't know, and there it had been, a useless block of wood and keys that sat in their basement and every time William touched it, it just sounded wrong. Over time, he had learned. He had played it more and more and maybe those times it didn't sound so bad but it still sounded wrong and in the end, he seemed too elegant for the instrument. For any instrument, really, it didn't suit him and if you had to play the piano then you had to appreciate rain but William didn't and that might have been the whole problem.

So the sound of a guitar coming from the basement was a very welcome, very appreciated change. A surprising one, but an appreciated one. At first, Ryan couldn't identify the song and he was about to lose it because the only thing he could think of was fucking Coldplay, but it made sense when he hesitated on the edge of the stairs near the basement.

The Cure. Of course, what else would he be playing for the dogs as a private concert? Ryan tiptoed down the carpeted basement stairs that he was seriously thinking about ripping the carpet out of because cold stairs deserved carpet. Not warm ones. At the bottom of the stairs, Ryan was hit by the overwhelming smell of berries that had seemed to soak into the basement, a smell that Ryan reserved to himself that he would burn out if he had to. If Brendon left on a bad note, that basement would go up in flames before Ryan would ever smell berry flavored Trident gum again.

It smelled sort of like cherries. Like fake cherries, jolly rancher cherries, and like the smell of really warm, on the verge of being rotten fruit. But not bad. It was almost a comforting smell, and that mixed with the sound of the guitar, of the gentle strumming, the fingernails connecting with the strings somehow without a pick to hold, all mixed with Brendon's voice that was like the deepest reddest fucking wine, jesus christ.

Ryan stood at the bottom of the stairs, and couldn't help but smile when he saw Bogart and Dottie sitting at Brendon's feet while he sang Pictures of You to them, of all songs to play on the guitar and sing to dogs, Ryan didn't understand why it was that one, but it wasn't a bad song.

"There was nothing in the world that I ever wanted more, than to feel you deep in my heart," Brendon sang, smiling back at Bogart's happy little face. It was, and had to be, of course, at that moment when he became aware of Ryan's presence.

Brendon stopped playing right away, which caused Dottie to look backwards right away and get that really happy dog look on her face as she ran up to Ryan. The true love of her life.

"Hi." If everyone else left him, at least he had Dottie. He had known Bogart for less than a day and wasn't getting the friendliest vibes from him so far but at least he had Dottie, the toughest, most evil, scariest dog in the whole world to protect him from Brendon and Bogart, the terrifying duo living in his house that were obviously bloodthirsty and ready to kill him.

Or not, maybe, but Brendon was putting his guitar away and Ryan felt sort of bad for interrupting him and then Brendon asked,

"Found a job yet?" It seemed a perfect way to get Ryan out of his room, and he felt immediately insulted that Brendon's first reaction was a nagging question that's main purpose was to get rid of Ryan, who didn't even reply before turning and marching up the stairs with so much frustration in each step that Dottie hesitated before following him.

When he reached his room, he pulled out the typewriter from god knows where it had disappeared and slammed it on his desk so hard that Dottie actually jumped and the desk gave a loud creak.

"Fuck off!" Ryan shouted at it, and kicked the leg. Dottie was about to make her departure before Ryan took the time to realize that he was having an actual physical fight with his desk and he was scaring his dog. "Fine, fine, you're forgiven," he told the desk, who had been apologizing for the dreadful creaking sound it had shot out.

And he sat in a chair with his fingers poised over the keys, about to write out long strings of paragraphs full of typos and lacking Fs except-except. Except he couldn't write. There was nothing to write about. 

The stranger in his basement who was ruining his life and whose last name was completely unknown was obviously not the topic he needed to write about and other than that, there were cigarettes and there was William but neither of them were going to help him out and he could write about the dreaded desk that he had just fought with but he found it pointless and the only thing that was really making any sense in his mind was the burn pile down in the basement. It had snowed again, and the ground outside was wearing the shitty, thin blanket of snow that barely covered it. And he wanted to melt it. He wanted to throw the pile of things down and watched them get water stained before dumping copious amounts of gasoline on it because oh my god he liked to watch things burn.

No, it wasn't like he spent his days dreaming about the smell of his ex's burning belongings but the way he hated the term ex because it sounded so casual, so boring, when it reality most exes had the job of plaguing one's mind until they ended up in their backyard throwing matches into the snow to get rid of their memory.

He would do it later, he decided. After Brendon left. Ryan didn't want him to look up the steps of the basement to see a plume of flames rising out of the snow, now, that was amusing and Ryan supposed that he could write about that if he really felt the need to.

Maybe he just wouldn't write at all. Maybe he would lie back in his bed and drown himself in blankets and not come out until Brendon climbed the stairs to enter the forbidden place that was his room to check if he was still alive.

Ryan was a diva. Not admittedly, but William had called him "a drama queen sometimes," and drama queen was such a fun term but it had come off as an insult so Ryan had retreated into his usual wounded silence which had quickly turned into an insecurity war within his head about how he couldn't write dialogue. And then, he wrote.

-

1/21 - Umbrellas in the Sun

We all want to be someone else but we are all our own stereotypes. Girls wear each other's scents on their lips and chase a.ter boys like they're .ooling anyone, but in the end we're all so .ucking terri.ied o. love that that's the thing stopping us .rom ever .inding it. We hang on and we cling, we dismiss warning signs, we pull umbrellas out when it's raining and pretend that it's not, but maybe we're all unworthy o. love. Maybe nothing we do is ever good enough and, trust me, I can believe that to be true. But maybe I shouldn't believe in anything ever again because why else would we have white lies and why else would we hurt people that we claim to care about?

It's always cold in my room, and I wonder i. it is meant to cause me discom.ort in some way, I wonder i. it's there to cause me to think and overthink, to deem mysel. unworthy o. love though the only thing I've really ever loved was a boy who used to think gay was an insult but apparently changed his mind a.ter he met me, a male who wears scarves and isn't opposed to makeup on men, a writer, a depressed writer. And he hated the rain. Maybe he was unworthy o.love because he hated the rain, or maybe he is unworthy o. love because he abandoned me right when we had reached the eye o. the storm. There was one calm moment that I tried to stretch an entire li.etime, and he took my hand and gave me a spin. I believed we were dancing, so I twirled and when I came out o. the spin, he was gone and I was .acing an entire storm by mysel.

"Fuck."

Ryan almost felt as though that word had to be said "period. -uck," because of the god fucking damned "F" key and he was going to find a way to write because it was the most important thing in the entire world to him and had been the only thing not to completely abandon him, except for the computer he had so casually tossed out of the window, but he felt as though as long as he could create some sort of thing then at least he was still human, at least he was still leaving footprints in the snow, he was still making some sort of mark on the world.

For a while, he felt as though if he would go outside, no leaves would be crushed under his feet, no dirt would appear on his shoes, no time would be wasted. He felt like the equivalent of a ghost, except he had long since decided that ghosts didn't exist in hopes that he would never become one.

It sounded like a terrible life, he mused, floating around and haunting people. Like old boyfriends, perhaps, maybe that wouldn't be so bad. It wasn't like Ryan didn't find himself wondering if William was happy, or if William even thought of him from time to time, which he must have, Ryan told himself, but he wasn't exactly sure, because William had been the one that abandoned him. Which meant that Ryan must have been terrible, because he had been convinced that they were happy and somehow, obviously, he had been wrong.

And he wasn't feeling sad anymore, not really, these days he just felt a little too angry and a little too emotionless other than that, he still thought too much but he never put down the good things on paper which made him feel like he wasn't going any decent writing, which wasn't true, the thing was, he was doing all of it in his head.

Most things happened inside of his head, and he supposed that, despite all of the over thinking, he wouldn't mind living there for a while. His mind was a beautiful place, he could create so many unique things, he could write aliens into existence and persuade the sun into not shining anymore, but only half of his words made it down onto paper, or shitty digital documents, and he always beat himself up for not writing enough of it down. He never treated himself well, and by now, he realized that he hadn't treated who he loved well, like how he had written suicide notes every day for a while and that William's hands had shaken when he brought them up to Ryan and Ryan had burned them and told William not to cry, he was just experimenting with different sorts of writing.

He had been. 

Ryan wouldn't lie about that, he didn't like lying in the first place, and he had spent weeks trying to convince William that he hadn't been suicidal and he had just been trying something new, he was a writer for god's sakes! And William had said:

"It would be easier to stop denying it."

Too many memories.

Ryan rushed down the stairs, knowing that if he was wearing socks, his sorry ass would have slid all the way to Timbuktu by then.

Brendon was standing by the door, about to leave for one of his jobs. He was wearing shorts and a white, long-sleeved button down shirt. One of his arms looked thic(c)ker than the other because of the layer of bracelets underneath the shirt, and the dress shoes at the end of his long legs made him all in all look absolutely ridiculous.

"Three questions, before you go." Ryan burst out, watching Brendon closely.

"Quick." Brendon said, pulling at a stuck zipper on the bag he was holding.

"What's your last name?"

"Urie." Brendon answered, not getting anything out of Ryan's perplexed look.

"Like that anime?" Ryan asked, blushing when Brendon looked only somewhat furious. "Yuri on-"

"Oh my god, don't even." Brendon said, now just looking offended. "U-R-I-E," he spelled. Ryan watched his lips move as the words moved past them.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty. Twenty one. I always forget. How old are you?"

"Twenty two." They stared at each other. Then-

"What?" Brendon asked.

"What?" Ryan replied, wondering what he had said wrong.

"You, well. You act older." Brendon said, eyeing Ryan up and down. "I mean, you look twenty two."

"I'll take it as a compliment." Ryan spoke hastily, and continued. "Do you believe in ghosts?" Brendon checked the time on the microwave before rolling his eyes.

"I don't believe in things that aren't proven to exist." With that, he left.

The question left Brendon's mind as soon as he made it to his job, where he was a waiter in a fancy restaurant. They didn't like him at all there, and just kept him around because he showed up on time and was nice to the customers. The manager of the place reminded him to change into long pants and spit out his gum whenever she could, but he never learned how to do the right thing, and she ended up simply sympathetic for him because things were hard for him.

Brendon hadn't exactly told his boss that he wasn't homeless anymore. She had probably taken him in out of pity, and kept him there because he did his work well, even if he didn't always match dress code or spit out his potent gum. Sometime after she had discovered that he was homeless, she had realized that he wasn't going to spend the money he was making on drugs or booze.

He actually wanted to make something of his life.

She admired him in that sense, and respected him as a person. Sometimes, on Saturday nights, she would lose her patience with him, because it wasn't that hard to just put on pants, but in the end, it didn't matter so much.

After his shift, Brendon walked back home in the cold, the snow pelting at his face. Seattle weather wasn't very welcoming, and there was no difference between winter and spring until May. When he reached the house that he supposed wasn't completely Ryan's anymore, he was completely exhausted.

It had been a day.

Bogart greeted him at the door and followed him downstairs, while Dottie was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Ryan, and Brendon honestly couldn't care less about him at that point, he was probably up in his room, screaming at inanimate objects, something he seemed prone to do.

What Brendon hadn't been expecting when he got downstairs was to see a plume of fire in the backyard. Rushing to the basement door, he pressed his face against the cold glass, about to turn the handle of the door to see what was going on, until he saw Ryan's glowing face hovering behind the flames. Goddammit. The fire seemed to be doing quite well despite the soaked, snowy ground, and Brendon assumed that Ryan must have doused whatever he was burning in layers of gasoline. Or alcohol.

Still, he cracked open the door and slipped outside, his sleeves rolled up and his bowtie undone around his neck. The bottoms of his too-long pants were damp with snow, and the fancy shoes that he had found a couple years ago in a dumpster weren't very fancy anymore, and had a sole falling off.

Ryan looked entranced by the fire.

It smelled like flames out there, like heat, like sand, like the industrial oven back in the kitchens at Brendon's restaurant. He watched from the bottom of the stairs, twisting at his bracelets. The fire slowly wore out and died, which didn't seem to suit Ryan. Frowning, he kicked snow over the remainder of the ashes on the ground.

And then he saw Brendon.

"Wanna bake something?"

Ryan was silent and watched Brendon get all the ingredients out while his skin changed back to a normal color. Which made it seem like he was a chameleon or something, no, his bare arms were all red from being out in the cold for too long, and he seemed quiet and honestly, a little shocked. As much as he wanted to, Brendon wasn't going to ask about what Ryan was burning, and was instead going to bake some peanut butter cookies because he could, and also because he wanted to bring them down to the park where old friends hung out. Not that he was going to see them face to face. They would take his gifts and know in the back of their minds that it was him that left them, but they would never look for him to say thank you. Brendon didn't want gratitude. 

"What are you, like, a chef, or something?" Ryan asked, grabbing a handful of Crisco and smearing it around his arms. Brendon watched in shock.

"Chefs don't bake."

He was wrong, most likely, and only wanted to bake because it was a distraction and besides, he needed to leave something for his friends. So Ryan mixed the wet ingredients while Brendon mixed the dry ones, and by the time the cookies were in the oven, Ryan was on the floor, trying to see if he could slide because there were so many ingredients all over him.

"Here, wait," he said, giggling, only slightly tipsy. His arms were covered in Crisco and peanut butter, his hair shot through with bits of sugar and flour, his skin more colorful than it had been when he had come back in from the cold. Brendon watched in alarm as he took his shirt off and covered his chest in more Crisco, doubled over laughing from it. Both of them had had their fair share of wine, the only kind of alcohol in the house, and were not to be trusted around too much peanut butter or Crisco.

Ryan stepped back a few feet and told Brendon to watch out, who was already giggling, his bracelets damp and dirty from the baking.

"You're going to hurt yourself," Brendon laughed, watching Ryan rub his hands together.

"Don't tell lies," Ryan said, kicking his feet back against the floor like a bull. "Ready?" Brendon was getting hysterical and Ryan hadn't even done what he was going to. And then, he threw himself down on the floor. Not completely, he did a running slide and actually slid, his shirtless body made it a few feet down the floor before he hit a cabinet, and Brendon dropped to the floor, wiping at his eyes.

And though both of them were rightfully sort of half drunk off of wine, it was another very different situation that felt both very wrong and very right and very messy but also very decently alright. Peanut butter and Crisco and, well, alright.


	7. Scenes From Highways 1981-2009

Ryan was lying in bed with covered in cookie crumbs and Crisco. He had showered as many times as possible, but the shortening was absolutely waterproof and, according to Brendon, would last at least a few days before leaving his skin. Like sunscreen. 

Ryan was terrified.

Not of the Crisco, well, maybe slightly, but more of the fact that he didn't have a job and that he was going to be left behind, and this time it was completely his own fault. There was nothing he could do to make it better except to get a job, except to be productive again, and he didn't feel ready but he was being forced to anyways, it didn't matter anymore.

He wanted Brendon to stay.

It was Tuesday night and all he wanted was for time to stop, it was the only thing he could think of, he didn't know what to do. Frankly, he felt useless and as though he was capable of nothing and couldn't do anything productive, ever, really, the world was getting warmer and Ryan felt colder, he wanted Dottie. He wanted desert heat, dry skin, the wind in his hair, cigarette smoke echoing out of his lungs, trying to convince them that they wouldn't become dark, crumpled, and utterly useless by some point. It was an odd craving for things he had never wanted so much in his life before, cacti, sand, blue skies that went on until the horizon swallowed them whole; it rained too much in Seattle and Ryan had been caught in the downpour for a little too long.

It was dry outside and he opened up the window, nearly feeling the walls in his room heave with a sigh as they breathed the cool air. He lit up a cigarette and tore the sheets off of his bed to lie back on the mattress so he could pretend that he was somewhere else, somewhere where time didn't exist and deadlines didn't loom over him like his own shadow.

Ryan wasn't a fan of his shadow.

For one, it was a sign that the sun was out, and Ryan had never been the biggest advocate for sunshine. Clouds felt much more comforting when they hung over him, like he could fall back into them when he got too sad. The sun would burn him if he fell too close. Maybe it kept him held up a little higher, maybe it made him watch his step a little more closely, but in the end, grey skies and soft clouds would hold him while he cried, pet at his hair and wrap him in blankets. The sun would shock him and force him back onto his feet.

He had to get back onto his feet.

He needed to form an opinion on the moon.

It shone a beam down onto the end of his mattress as though highlighting something that didn't exist. Maybe there was a ghost there. Maybe not. Cigarette smoke rose above Ryan's frame as he lay on the mattress. He closed his eyes and imagined himself as a skeleton lying under a carpet of moss and lichen. Days and nights would pass over him, rain would soak his old bones, sunshine would warm him back up. The summer would bake his bones, fall would drape leaves on him, winter would snow down upon him in all its great glory.

Flowers would grow on him in the spring.

He smelled like nature and all things real, just rain, earth, and plants. All he was was a skeleton. He owned the forest, the trees belonged to him. Finally, he had managed to be the king of something.

Something was burning. Ryan sat up quickly to see his cigarette scorching a hole into his mattress, dammit, it had brought him back to life.

"Yeah, yeah," he told the mattress as he smacked the embers out of it. No real damage had been done. Standing up and glancing out the window, Ryan stretched his arms over his head and cracked his back. It was time for job hunting.

One in the morning job hunting sessions were not usually Ryan's favorite pastimes, he had never embarked on a trip such as this one before, but the small amount of time he had spent as a skeleton had reminded him that he very well might waste away to something of the sort if he didn't get his act together. Technically, it was Wednesday and he did not have a job, but he would, hopefully, have one by the time that Brendon woke up.

He crept out of the house like he was afraid of waking Brendon up, which, really, he very well might have been. He would never confess to it, though, Ryan was never one to own up to anything. The streets seemed his own at that moment, and he wandered his way to the middle of the road, kicking at the stripes in the middle to see if they would move if he hit them hard enough.

They didn't.

Nothing exciting ever happened and no one had enough of an imagination to change anything. Parents gave their kids curfews, schools suspended kids for setting off popping sparklers in the hallways, boyfriends and girlfriends set up all sorts of unnecessary rules for each other.

It wasn't okay.

Ryan had never had a curfew. If he ever had a child, he wouldn't give them one either. If there was anything dangerous out and about that didn't include desperate men who were out looking for jobs, it was up for them to find out. The hours between one and five in the morning had a funny way of making people feel like they were on top of the world or under it. No one would get to experience that if they were sound asleep, all safe in their beds.

Experiences came from pushing limits.

Setting popping sparklers off in the hallways was done in a precarious way because the kids knew that they would get in serious trouble if, somehow, a backpack strap caught fire or a sparkler hit a locker, nothing was damaged except for the view of them in their parents eyes. To them: delinquents. To other students: badasses. To themselves: pushing the limits. The limits of rules, of laws, of everything in the world that held everything back, once, someone had tried to give Ryan rules in a relationship.

The word "implied" had been used over and over and Ryan had felt so fucking confused because it wasn't implied if he didn't know it was implied- not everyone had the same damn brain and Ryan had been too "out there" for this person and he hadn't even known what out there fucking meant and the sex was good but otherwise they were just bitter and angry at each other because no one understood the inside of each others heads. 

In the end, they had broken up and Ryan hadn't complained. He was sick of being ordered around. He was sick of people being emotionless and lacking basic creativity, he wanted to live in a world full of people who had ideas, people who wore whatever they wanted, people who weren't afraid of Crisco, people who weren't afraid of anything.

And Ryan was afraid.

Afraid of being left, that was it, he was so scared of people abandoning him, a completely self centered fear, at least one that focused on his well being. He had been wandering around downtown Seattle for quite some time, the glowing skyscrapers stretched over his head as if they were trying to prove that they were better than him. The Space Needle glared at him in the near distance. He felt overwhelmed.

As he made his way back, nearly sideways across the town, he came across a sign in front of a house-business thing. Dog walkers needed. A phone number. Well dammit, he needed a fucking pen.

He spent a while looking around the streets for something to write on his arm with and only came up with a bottle cap. More desperate than ever, he carved the number into the side of his arm. It was fine. A little blood welled up in the 0 in the middle of the 2 and 6. He licked it off like a child.

Zig zagging his way across the city, Ryan came across a high bridge. Without a barrier. He climbed up on top of it almost immediately, sat down with his legs hanging over the side. From a distance, he would have just been a thin silhouette against an orangey backdrop, a few blurs of headlights spinning through the universe below him. Ryan's axis was on a tilt, he was headed in a whole different direction. He was the asteroid that whole planets were terrified of, the solar flare that heated up the fear in people's peripheral vision.

Once, he had heard that when people jumped from buildings or bridges, they died because of air pressure before they even hit the ground. He would have looked up if it was true, but his resources to the internet had diminished after his computer had unwillingly thrown itself from a window. Maybe it had died before it hit the ground.

Suicide had never seemed like a rational idea to him, not at all, and he cringed when thinking about the way it would feel to disregard his body in the middle of a highway, guts strewn around the road, bones broken, bloody and miserable.

Although he had never had too much regard for his body, Ryan at least knew that he wasn't going to die in a gory way. Perhaps he would light himself on fire, he liked fire, that way they wouldn't have to go through the trouble of cremating him. He didn't want to rot under the earth. Maybe above it, like a skeleton, but he never wanted to be trapped beneath it. He never wanted to be trapped anywhere. Trapped with someone who tried to pin rules onto their relationship. Trapped in a life he was too scared to live.

"Hey." Someone was behind him on the sidewalk part of the bridge. Ryan didn't recognize the voice. "You're not gonna jump, are you?" A male, most likely, an adult, most likely.

"Nah," Ryan drawled. "I don't think that's ever really necessary."

"Oh." Whoever was behind him paused. Something moved. They had a bike. Skateboard, maybe. Who knew.

"Do you believe in jumping off of bridges?" He asked, wishing that his breath had the audacity to show itself in the dim light.

"I don't think that's something to believe in. I mean, I wouldn't." The voice answered, slightly uncomfortable.

"Why not?"

"You die eventually, so you might as well just let someone else do the honors."

"Someone else. Do you believe in God?" Ryan asked. He was strictly non religious, and didn't like rules being set for him in any way, much less by a mythical creature that people worshipped as a deity.

"Yeah."

"I don't," Ryan mused, letting out a long, steady breath. "My breath won't show. It's too warm."

"Are you high?" The guy asked. Ryan heard the wheel of whatever mode of transportation he had scrape the ground.

"No." Ryan thought for a minute and laughed. "I like drugs. My ex didn't. He made me stop smoking weed. I mean, come on! It's just weed. I did coke occasionally, man, that was fun. I did heroin once. Didn't get addicted. I think addiction mainly depends on your circumstance. I just hung out with the punks. They liked their weed. Heroin, not so much." Silence. Bored, Ryan climbed to his feet and stood up straight. He stretched again, the same way he had in his bedroom but this time, the air pulled at him, teased at his shirt and pants like they wanted to strip him of them. And he jumped off of the pass, back onto the sidewalk.

The guy did have a bike, and it looked like he was returning home from a late night job. Ryan yawned at him.

"I must be going," he said, and made his way back down the bridge in the opposite direction that the man had been going. When he returned home, he spent the rest of the morning on top of the kitchen counter, soaking his arms in the freezing cold sink. At five in the morning, he removed his arms to find that, despite his best efforts, the Crisco was still there.

Maybe it would never leave.

The bottle cap carving was a mess of peeling, bloody skin, a mess that he hadn't realized was so messy. He typed the number into the telephone that William had insisted on buying, a vintage, piece of shit thing that he had fawned over for forty minutes straight in an antique shop while Ryan had been typewriter browsing. In the end, Ryan had gotten his Underwood and William had gotten his telephone. After Ryan had set up the typewriter, William had grudgingly asked if they could they could set up the telephone. Ryan had confessed that he had thought William to be joking. After a minor row, they had gotten telephone lines hooked up to it, registered it, and it had become their landline.

Since Ryan wasn't one for cell phones, the landline had become his only source of outside connection other than leaving the house himself, and he was lucky to have it at the moment that he had to make a phone call.

He spoke briefly on the phone with a dog walking person who told him that they wanted to meet him in person but would most likely give him the job because he sounded fine and they really wanted to keep their business going, and that he should wait until at least eight in the morning to call next time.

Sometime around eight in the morning, Brendon crept out of the basement. Him and Ryan stared at each other as if they were facing off.

"I got a job." Ryan announced and brandished his arm as if it were proof. "That right there is the phone number of my employers."

"You cut it into you?" Demanded Brendon, staring at the scabbed over number on Ryan's forearm.

"No, yes, well. I was out on the street and I saw it and the only way I could figure to write it down was with a bottle cap I found." Brendon stared at him, his arm, and back to him. It took the bottle cap number story for him to realize that Ryan really, really wanted him to stay.

That was odd.

"So I guess I'll stay for a bit." Brendon said, running a hand back through his hair. Ryan felt relief almost wash over him in waves.

"Cool." It felt much, much more than cool, and Ryan couldn't help but force himself to frown. Brendon started going about the kitchen, fixing food, while Ryan hung around awkwardly, his eyes following Brendon's slim form. "I've gotta be there at, like, nine." Brendon nodded and raised his eyebrows, not impressed.

"I've got to be at my job," he said, checking the microwave clock, "in twenty minutes." With that, he ate his cereal quite briskly and stared at Ryan, who announced that he was going to clean up his arm and vanished up the stairs.

Sometime after nine o'clock, after engaging in a lengthy conversation with a pushy woman, Ryan set out for the first dog he was assigned to walk. The dog lived at a house out in the suburbs and simply required to be walked by him. Ryan wasn't expecting anything stressful.

Walking home earlier that morning had lead Ryan to the terrifying realization that he had no way to get to the suburbs. Except for public transport. He had sort of permanently lent his one set of car keys to Brendon since he was paying for gas and that was an issue, plus Ryan wasn't in the mood for hot wiring anyone's vehicle, so he stood in the street and cursed, both out loud and in his head, for about a minute. Then, realizing that cursing was getting him nowhere, he stormed back downtown, furious. There were no clear ideas in his mind as to how he was going to get Brendon give up his car, but it would have to happen somehow.

Ryan arrived at the dog's house later than expected, of course, and awkwardly waited outside the door for a fat old woman to open it, beaming.

"You must be our new dog walker!" What had happened to the old one, and why were people so pretentious?

"Yup..." He said slowly, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"Welcome, welcome! What's your name?" She ushered him inside, beaming. Inside, a television was on and Ryan heard a sports game being played with the volume on full blast. Someone was shouting at it.

"I'm Ryan." He said, cutting off anything else he may have added when his voice was drowned out by a barrage of screams.

"Those refs are blind! Blind, I tell you! That was a foul and I know it, a foul! A foul! Peggy! Peggy, is this thing recording? I need to play it back, it. was. a. FOUL!!" Ryan stared at Peggy in alarm, and sort of gestured towards the room.

"Well, I suppose I should introduce you to our dog," She said, completely ignoring the screaming coming from from the next room. "Pickle! Oh, Pickle-poo!" Ryan choked and then coughed and then pounded his fist into his chest a few times. He turned to the side and coughed a couple of more times, hoping that his behavior wasn't being taken as rude.

"Would you like some water, dear?" Peggy asked, and Ryan shook his head, wiping at his eyes.

"I think- sorry- there's probably something in the air." Pickle waddled into the room, a little brown and black dachshund. Ryan couldn't take this seriously. After being told about Pickle's exact specific needs, Ryan took the dog and got out of the house as soon as he could. He felt trapped in there but felt too hot outside, he had been wearing long sleeves so no one would notice the scabbed over numbers he had carved into his forearm much earlier that day.

It was odd, what people considered acceptable for the general public and not. Ryan didn't like how people thought of others, how people came up with dirty comments to exchange behind backs, how people had somehow come up with the fact that disreputable gossip and obvious lies were okay to discuss about other people; Ryan had always been a straightforward person.

High school had been a mess when it came to honesty. Teachers didn't like it but at least they didn't meet him outside in the hallway, demanding for him to take a swing at them. Somehow still more logical than all of them, always, Ryan had made these sort of appointments to fight after school, and had often waited behind the school bus loop and had been driven to the gasoline soaked ground multiple times, arriving home with a bruised face and a fat lip.

There were certain writers who wrote about fights as though they were magical things that only certain special people experienced, and Ryan could tell that they had never been in a fight. They seemed to know nothing about school rules and how they were respected, shockingly, by the kids who kept up appearances in hanging around smoking behind the school buses so they could get their lights punched out after school. The thing was, the kids had stopped caring after a while.

It was Ryan's old advice, the kind that parents gave to their kids but never in the right way. They would say "ignore people who bully you." Ryan would say, "let them bully you, because they'll stop once they realize that you're stronger than them or have given up caring." His explanation made much more sense. Because halfway through his freshman year of high school, the big bad juniors who were out to grind up some freshman ass realized that Ryan was going to keep fighting back. It didn't matter how much blood he left on the pavement when they had finished, it didn't matter if he cried even if he wasn't crying, even if it was because when something hits your nose, your eyes water, he was still going to meet them back there and subject himself to an ass kicking simply because he could stand on his own.

These days, he wasn't all that sure if he could anymore.


	8. The President

"Do you sell notebooks here?" Ryan was greeted with a sort of joking look from the worker lady, she wasn't taking him seriously and he wasn't necessarily taking himself seriously either. It was a paper craft store, what else would they sell? Individual sheets of loose leaf paper for a buck a piece? Now that he thought of it, Ryan could admit that it wasn't a bad business venture.

"Yes..." The worker lady said, obviously unprepared to deal with the chaos and confusion that was Ryan Ross.

"Where are they?" Arguably, it was a giant store and the worker lady wasn't providing any sort of guidance.

"Aisle eighteen," she said, and promptly disappeared. So Ryan searched for aisle eighteen, which was full of notebooks. Full of them. Now he was just overwhelmed because jesus, did there have to be this many notebooks? All he wanted was one he could write in with pens that didn't have thin pages which would let the ink bleed through.

An easy solution could be pencils, but Ryan thought pencils were for idiots who doubted themselves enough to have to erase their work and start over on what they had already did. Pens were for bold people with class. Markers were for assholes.

Ryan wanted a bright notebook because, though he was attempting to bask in his sadness and depression, there was some part of him that desperately wanted out. So he picked out a bright blue notebook with a German brand name and graph papered pages. Normally, he would like lined paper, but he was quickly coming to realize that squares could make his writing even more neat. Not that his handwriting was anything spectacular, but he was really losing his patience with the stupid typewriter, and there were no keys to press when it came to his own handwriting.

He took the notebook and then went searching for pens. It took far too long for him to find the actual aisle, and then took him even longer to pick out any. He ended up with a four pack of Faber Castell black pens, each with a different sized tip. Life was fine. Knowing that he had plenty of tape back home, Ryan bought his book and his pens and left the store. Once he exited back to the parking lot, he was once again hit with the realization that he would have to take a bus to get home.

Jesus.

When he first entered the bus, he was greeted by the sight of an old woman practically in the middle of the aisle, slumped over her walker so far that he was afraid she would fall chest first onto the ground. He had counted out his quarters for the bus driver, but now stood stock still in the middle of the aisle, wondering how he was supposed to get around this woman.

"Please step past the yellow line." The bus driver's voice came from behind him, and Ryan eased his heels over the piss yellow streak on the floor. The old woman's walker nudged his leg. He was terrified. Everyone was looking at him with these expectant facial expressions, as if he was supposed to do something about this woman. He stared at her. She did not stare back.

He held onto the handles on the ceiling and tried not to crash into anyone as the bus sped off. Ryan had no idea where his stop would be. At the next stop, more people than he was comfortable being run into by boarded, and some dude told him to "move, bro." The lady was so far out into the aisle at this point that she was basically taking up all of the space. Panicked and utterly clueless, Ryan crouched down and basically crawled under her walker. The gritty floor of the bus scraped his knees, and he stood up with all of the dignity that he could muster.

The guys behind him obviously weren't in the mood for crawling under her walker, but now were put in the same awkward situation that he had just been forced to face. Ryan hung on for as long as he could but the bus was hot and people stared and he got off at the next stop, somewhere vaguely downtown with street signs and buildings that he didn't exactly recognize.

As he always did, he headed towards the Space Needle to center himself. He hated Seattle. It was too calm but always too confusing, too big but always a little too cramped, too hot except when it was too cold. And yet, he had made his life there, bought a house there, been inspired there and now, he had been reduced to dog walking status there. It was as if he had gone through the whole cycle of a life and he had barely turned twenty.

Somehow, he managed to find his way home. Dottie, Bogart, and a wall of cigarettes greeted him, and he wondered where Brendon was. Not there, obviously. He was never there except for Sundays and late at night, and Ryan wondered if he would rather be busy than bored and sad all the time.

He had to find a new way to write.

The empty house was threatening. Only after spending a few minutes inside of it, Ryan felt panicked and not wanted there, of course not, he was going to be lonely forever and die alone and they would bury him in a dark, heavy coffin and he would rot under the earth and they would play Coldplay at his funeral and oh- oh god. No, there wouldn't have to be any Coldplay because there would be no funeral, his coffin would be basically plastic because there would be no one to speak of to pay for it, no one would be there because no one cared.

No one would care.

Dottie cared, now, at least, but dogs died and he had to walk them while he was still alive so he put Dottie and Bogart on their leashes and took them outside with his notebook and pens and turned up his nose at pollen like he had allergies, which he didn't, he never had, but spring had never been his season. Perhaps his brain was fucked because there was nothing as poisonous as optimism these days, but spring had been all about preppy people cleaning out their houses and shouting about their new selves, acting like they hadn't posted a "new year, new me!" picture on their Instagram but changed the caption halfway through February when they had just eaten five cupcakes in a row and realized that their diet wasn't working out and they hadn't started exercising yet.

Ryan didn't like forced exercise. He didn't like the way the air played with his hair as though it had permission, the way it drew his dogs farther away from him. They danced around him like their leashes were ribbons and he was a maypole, yet he still had that old set panic about losing Dottie; maybe there was a problem with losing things that he had come to depend on for happiness. And since he had come to the decision that he was going insane, he could start writing his prose to the air about it was stealing things from him and ruining his life.

They got to a park. Bogart barked, Dottie didn't, Ryan walked them and kept his eyes on the ground. After they had covered nearly every square inch of grass in the park and Bogart wouldn't stop whining to Ryan, he sat them all very responsibly down under a tree. Bogart lay down farther away from Ryan and turned his back to him, oblivious to the offense that both Ryan and Dottie took at that movement. He really was Brendon's dog. Dottie curled up near Ryan and leisurely rolled over on her back with an eager smile on her face, wanting a belly rub.

So Ryan smiled back and rubbed her soft belly until he remembered that sometimes it's impossible to write while you're petting a dog. So he told her that he would pet her sometime again, and used one of his pens for good measure.

At first, he wasn't sure what to write. That wasn't normal. If he was going to go through a period of writer's block, spring was the perfect time for it, but he didn't want that to happen. It never had before, and he didn't need it to. He could write in love and he could write out of love but he couldn't write while being content. Which he wasn't, he was spited by absolutely everything and lonely and angry but he couldn't, he couldn't write.

Was it the new medium? Was it because there was no way to go back and scratch out his mistakes? At least he had always been able to fix his writing on computers, and he could watch his fingers on the keys of typewriters but if he didn't like the way one letter looked in his own writing then there would be a problem because too often, Ryan wasn't happy with what he had created.

"It was the feeling I got when I saw your handwriting again; a shopping list written on a yellow legal pad with the air that you had nothing better to do with your time. Food that I didn't care for or about, crumbs that I had spilt on my bed, crumbs that you made a fuss over, you always did. The feeling was one that's hard to describe, one that you wouldn't like to hear about because you write nonfiction and don't have the time to hear about what kind of ridiculous fantasy I somehow have the stupidity to dream up." The ink of the pen looked completely dark enough against the lighter cream of the paper, and Ryan stared at the words he was creating for long enough to make shapes start to spin behind his eyes.

"Dreams aren't for people with minds, you'd say, using minds as some form of compliment for smart people who sit around and write articles about the earth, maybe, and things us dreamers don't want to think about. Like shopping lists, like real life, like taking care of someone other than the little people in my brain who need more nourishment than I ever did and maybe, just maybe, I wasn't taking enough care of you. Not that you ever wanted me to, but the side glances you would shoot me sometimes when I talked too much or not enough, usually, and the way you put 'for Ryan...' after the strawberry pop tarts on the list. The kind that got crumbs in the bed that you would shake out and brush off when I wasn't looking. It seems like I never was." Dottie and Bogart were playing together now, Dottie not showing much patience for the energetic, younger dog.

"Seeing your handwriting was like seeing your corpse. Maybe a little less gruesome, less waxen skin and more yellowed paper, but it still felt the same way in my heart. The same way I felt when you untangled yourself from me and told me that grey skies were ugly skies, the same way I felt when you peeled yourself off of the headboard of our bed, you were the kid going to college and I was the empty room left behind, something you had outgrown. I was immature. You have the handwriting of a lawyer. You never liked humor in writing and I'm here trying to convince myself that I never liked you but I think both of us are lying because once I kissed you and it was so amazing that I swear to god my lips might have just exploded and put themselves back together all in a matter of seconds, and once I heard you laughing at some stupid crack article." Ryan's shoulders had found themselves hunched over the paper, the pen in his hand shaking.

"Lovely is too much of a whimsical word for you so I'll use it to describe him, dreamy is too lovesick of a word for you so I'll use it to describe me, empty is a word for anyone and I'll use it for my heart, band-aids are something I seem to lack and I'll use them if I find any on any pieces of me that don't require stitches. I was a crumb to you, the leftover pop tart bits in the sheets that scratched your legs and made me laugh because they were tickly but made you frown because you thought it was gross. All you had to do was shake me off of the sheets, and I was gone." A drop of water had appeared on the paper, soaking through to the next page. Ryan watched it in shock, the way it darkened and, frankly, ruined the page it was sitting on. There were no clouds in the sky and Ryan reached up to wipe at his face, realizing that it was him.

Crying.

Ashamed and shocked that he was doing this, that his body was breaking the pact that he had so seriously made with it, Ryan quickly wiped at his face and shut the notebook, resolving to never open it again. Neither of the dogs got a chance to protest as they left the park, and Ryan left them downstairs and disappeared up to his room without even stopping to wonder what Brendon was doing at that moment.

Wondering about what other people were doing while he was lying under his covers and crying really wasn't in Ryan's best intentions, but he couldn't stop thinking about William. And it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that William could have broken it off that easily and disappeared to go live his life without the burden of Ryan hanging behind him. The cigarette wall wasn't working.

Ryan tore it down with no hesitation, the thin paper coming apart between his fingers, tobacco littering the floor; none of it fucking mattered, nothing had to matter anymore, he had to get over it. The rest of the cigarettes came down along with some of the cream paint from the walls, but Ryan couldn't take any time to realize the damage he was causing to the poor walls when he was sinking down onto the floor, feeling like he was absolutely falling apart, surrounded by stupid cigarettes and a stupid room that William hadn't spent quite enough time to figure out how to haunt.

He was a lame excuse for a ghost.

And Ryan was anything but an excuse for a sad human so he stayed up to watch the moon rise and set, spin and dance on the stage but everyone had left because they had thought it was intermission. Ryan sank deeper into his chair, comfortable to watch something else beautiful take the spotlight and put on a different sort of routine.

Ryan didn't need shitty M&Ms or merchandise, he just needed something that wasn't the sun and wasn't blue skies. Maybe black skies and a moon would help him realize that damn, his house was dirty and he had to end up at the basement door at eleven in the morning, wanting a reason to talk to Brendon but also maybe wanting to burn some more things and get rid of some more things because damn, he was finished with William.

He wasn't going to turn into the author who just wrote sappy poems about how his gay ass couldn't get over a boy who had dropped him long enough ago. Maybe he would allow himself to wallow in that for some time, but just some. The rest of his life wasn't going to be dedicated to the idea of killing himself over the fact that he had been through a bad breakup.

And that's all it would ever be. There was no other metaphor for being lovesick, and if there was then Ryan wasn't the one who was going to end up writing it down. There would be no more cigarettes taped to the walls, no more breakdowns over leashes, no more.

It was warm in the basement.

After Ryan had introduced what he had wanted to do, Brendon had obliged to the idea of sitting there with an open trash bag so Ryan could chuck stuff out. Really, Brendon had nothing better to do, and was sort of coming to like something about the way Ryan acted, so there was no problem for him in hanging around the carpeted floors that Ryan hated so much and watching the other boy's body move and listen to his rough voice spark around in his head.

Ryan looked like he had been crying. Something he would never admit to, of course, but Brendon could tell that something was wrong by the way he seemed to be keeping his words on a leash, not going off on the tangents that Brendon was used to hearing about.

"If you don't mind me asking, who used to live down here?" Brendon asked when they moved over to the record player, after watching Ryan turn his nose up at a certain number of records that he was obviously not the biggest fan of. Ryan paused, holding a Joy Division record in his lap, one that he had carelessly thrown himself onto weeks before.

"My ex." Ryan said finally, wondering how he managed to make it sound so casual.

"She had a good taste in music." Brendon mumbled, digging through William's old pile of records. She. It was funny how Brendon automatically assumed that whoever Ryan dated had been a girl, it always seemed like William was the flamboyant one with the high voice and the fashion sense and Ryan had been the one that no one liked, the unsociable half of the relationship who had to have been in the military at some point, simply popular belief, and preferred to sulk and drink himself silly at social engagements.

"He. He's a guy. William." That was his name, and Brendon nodded at it, he probably would never remember it, but speaking it again felt like everything in the world to Ryan.

"Respectively," Brendon continued, as though it was nothing, "what are you going to do with these records, if you don't want them?"

"What, do you want them?" Ryan asked. He didn't want any of them. All of them were associated with memories of him and William lounging around the basement, William's smile, the way his hair smelled, the way every little part of him fell perfectly into place except for the fact that he didn't like rain and he sometimes liked screaming at his boyfriend-

"I dunno. We could sell them." Brendon leaned backwards and stretched his bare legs out in front of him. At least it was good weather to wear shorts. Both of them were hot, and Ryan pulled at his shirt, taking a deep breath.

"Isn't heat supposed to rise?" Asked Brendon, not caring that Ryan promptly ignored him when he started laughing.

"What the fuck?" He giggled, leaned over a record he had pulled from the bottom of William's messy stack.

"What?" Brendon asked, sitting back up, his hair greasy, matted down, and falling in his face a little. Ryan was laughing like he was drunk except this time he wasn't, he was dumping CDs and cassettes out of a stuffed sleeve of a The Lion King broadway edition soundtrack.

"Fuck, it's old guilty pleasure shit!" Ryan was obviously enjoying himself, tossing the hand-burned CDs and self recorded tapes around. "Oh no!" He called, his face turning red and his eyes flicking across Brendon's.

"What?" Brendon asked again, really curious this time. "What?" He demanded, leaning over to Ryan, who pulled the CD back over his head, almost taunting Brendon to reach for it himself. So Brendon did, not at all hesitant. And he didn't want to end up on top of Ryan but he did, a little sweaty and a little scared, his body in full contact with Ryan's, thin and hot underneath him.

Brendon forgot about the CD when the built up sexual tension became almost unbearable, but Ryan would hold it close to him because no one could ever know about the fact that "Coldplay" was written multiple times on the handwritten tracklist for the disc.


	9. End Of Life

That hadn't been okay.

The feeling of Brendon's body on top of his own was haunting Ryan, followed him to bed and curled around him, lulled him to sleep and woke up next to him. He was surprised that he had even managed to fall asleep, but there was an odd sort of comfort that he wasn't sure how much he liked hanging around him, going into his lungs and coming out of them as a completely different chemical.

Had it been okay?

The feeling of Brendon's body on top of his own was reminiscent of old times, when other people had hung over Ryan in the same way, luring him in with a little sweat and a little smile. Jokes, tricks, hands, skin, all of it was the same and Ryan hated it and craved it at the same time. Nothing was wrong with feeling a little loved sometimes.

But not by Brendon, the alleged homeless guy in his basement. Brendon wasn't what Ryan wanted, Ryan was vain and focused mainly on himself, he didn't need another pretty boy fucking with his life. He didn't need the feeling of Brendon's body on top of his own. He needed proper inspiration that didn't all deal with being lovesick, he needed to be able to properly write again, and he definitely didn't need to be getting mixed vibes from Brendon.

Mixed vibes could definitely equal feelings and damn, Ryan didn't need to be catching feelings either. There were enough of those, and he would have welcomed the simple lack of anything as though he hadn't been feeling a little too much of that for the past three months.

So now he would hide back up in his room again after his one day of responsibility had left him, it wasn't as though he was getting emails from the dog walking company with addresses and specifications about the dogs and all kinds of stuff, no, one little thing could set him off and it was back to his room for good.

-

3/18 - Somewhere Else

"Have you ever been walking and ended up somewhere that wasn't where you had intended to go? Maybe it had been raining and the streets had looked a little blurred and different or the umbrella had hung low over your eyes so recognition had been a little messed. Maybe you had gotten hit by a wave of water because cars these days have no respect for pedestrians and that had made you aware that you weren't on your street and were, consequently, planted only a few houses or blocks away from a place that doesn't want you back.

And you don't know how your head got the best of you but it has and there you are, cold and wet, like a dog that has been kicked to the curb. It's almost a helpless feeling, a feeling that you don't know why you're there and you're not sure if you belong there, you don't, and you stare.

Rain patters down on your umbrella and it sounds like giving up. Your surroundings don't really matter until you make your way back to your real home, a place that welcomes you and doesn't leave you full of so much heartache that you feel as though your chest might crack and your knees might give out and you might just-

Break.

Spring. It rains a lot in spring, at least, that's what they say, and maybe that's you've gotten yourself caught up in this particular downpour. You've stopped leaving the house because it feels too good to get your clothes soaked and your hair wet and your heart beating again; this is an experience now fended off by the umbrella shielding your eyes, hiding you from whatever you don't want to see. Your shoes are wet and the grass all around you is green, flowers are blooming, trees have sprouted their leaves and will be standing tall until it gets too hot to live in the summer, and they die in the fall.

Maybe you're like a tree. Now that sounds stupid and I can imagine you telling me so, but I swear to god I saw you standing outside of my house in the rain and the umbrella was tilted back a bit and I wasn't sure if those were tears on your face or just raindrops.

Maybe I'm just too hopeful. About summer, and the way his smile will get warmer and warmer until it swallows me whole. I'll be able to live through summer but I'm not sure about winter or fall, the seasons in which I turned into a tree and became cold and lifeless, my leaves gone, my beauty invisible."

"What the fuck?" Ryan looked like a crazy person again. He hadn't chosen to be hit by a sandal, the sandal had just decided to jump out of the window at high speeds to target his shoulder. Maybe it was Ryan's fault for sitting out on the curb, hunched over his notebook, scribbling away with breaks to squint into the sunshine.

He had been on his way to Jon's apartment but had gotten distracted and had sat down to write when he had finally arrived. The stairs hadn't looked all too friendly and his pen had looked a lot kinder than usual, so the words just happened, like they did, and he was jerked out of his daze by a sandal that could only belong to Jon Walker clear on smacking his shoulder.

"Ross!" Came the accompanying and distant shout, Jon, unfortunately, didn't have a balcony and was half hanging out of his window, arm across the glass, body stretched skywards. Ryan didn't feel like shouting again, and got up to salute Jon, who made a scoffing noise. "Get your ass up here!" He added, necessarily, and proceeded to duck his head back inside and shut the window. Hard.

So Ryan stomped his way back up the cold staircase and encountered Jon standing in the doorway of his apartment with his arms crossed when he reached Jon's floor. He was wearing flip flops and an ugly brown sweatshirt that made him look even more like a stoner than he already did.

"You're a dick."

"Tell me something I don't know." Ryan came inside and, somehow, wasn't kicked out within the first seven minutes of his entry. Spencer wasn't there this time, thankfully, but Ryan still felt a little awkward standing in the same spot where he had uttered some really, really, ugly words. Usually, Ryan didn't consider anything he did or said "ugly." Ugly was an ugly word in itself and Ryan never felt like pitying himself enough to assign a word like that to himself. Meanwhile he wasn't exactly vain enough to call his own work "perfect," but god damn, it was a lot closer than ugly ever came.

"Why were you sitting out on the curb?" Jon asked, arms crossed over his chest in a way that seemed too defensive for him.

"Just inhaling some exhaust fumes." Ryan confessed, giving Jon a rare biting smile. Well, no, his smiles weren't rare. When he had been with William and had spent time with Jon, he had hardly ever stopped smiling or laughing. Life had seemed so much more enjoyable back then, and he had never put a pen to paper to write anything self destructive or self pitying. All there was was sunshine and rainbows and flowers and good things, life had seemed like a never-ending roller coaster, but Ryan's view of the roller coaster metaphor was sort of different.

Roller coasters were fun. Exhilarating, and the whole thing about roller coasters was that when you got off of them, all you wanted to do was go again. You could ride the same roller coaster all day long and never get sick of it because the twisty feeling in your stomach never really left because it was all just so crazy, you were flying through the air on a thin track made of metal. And Ryan didn't want to lose William's feeling, his power, his beauty. So when they had finished with each other, Ryan had been pathetic enough to think that maybe, just maybe, he could go again. He had just wanted to go again.

Jon took notice of the notebook that Ryan was clutching and gestured vaguely at it.

"You're writing again?" Ryan shrugged. "That's good!" Jon had uncrossed his arms to point out Ryan's notebook, and didn't seem to find the need to put them back in their former positions. "Are you feeling less like a dick now?"

"Yes." Ryan said, grudgingly. "I'm sorry for being a dick. I had no excuse to say that stuff. Things are..." Jon waited, patient. He always was. "Changing."

"Things are alright with you and Brendon?" Ryan pulled his hand up to scratch behind his right ear, the nervous tick that Jon had come to memorize and recognize. Sometimes both of them forgot that they were best friends and were almost shocked when they remembered things about each other that they hadn't needed to know but had simply stored away for memory, like the name of Jon's old dog, or Ryan's eleventh grade english teacher who he had nearly strangled; little things that all built up to the great big void of friendship.

"See, well. Brendon is. Um." Jon stared at his friend, disbelieving.

"Did you-"

"Nothing happened, well, I mean. Nothing really, he just, like, ended up, like, lying on top of me and he's sort of hot, and, well." Jon was quiet again, his face pensive. "I just feel weird about it."

"I mean..." And Jon didn't know how to bring up William without sounding intrusive and bad but if Ryan was finding a way to get over him, Jon wasn't going to complain. "Well, good! Lie on top of each other all day long if it'll help you move on-"

"Hey." And Ryan didn't want to label the word "William" a "trigger word" for him, but he felt as though Jon didn't have the authority to be talking so casually about it. Ryan wouldn't have minded Brendon lying on top of him all day, but he did mind the way that Jon was acting, as though he knew everything and Ryan wasn't allowed to have feelings.

"You've got to get over him. It's been months." Ryan narrowed his eyes at Jon. Was he serious?

"I would if I-"

"I don't think you're trying. I don't think you get to excuse yourself at this point. We're not fighting about this."

"We always fight! We're allowed to fight! We fight like we've been in an on and off relationship since eighth grade." Ryan said, directing their conversation away from William. Jon paused, but let the minor change of subject slide. There was nothing more that he could do.

"Do you want to come walk some dogs with me?" Ryan asked, knowing fully well that he himself didn't want to go walk dogs, he just wanted to go write some more and pretend he wasn't busy thinking about Brendon instead of William, thank god, for once.

"What- you walk dogs?" Jon didn't know about his job. It had always seemed like Jon knew every aspect of Ryan's life, but Ryan had faded out of even having a glow of life in him, and was trying his best to make a reappearance in the world.

"I got a job as a dog walker. It's fine."

"Must be." And they left Jon's shitty apartment into the cold stairs and then down to the busy road below, brown and grey and dusty like it always was.

"How's your guy?" Ryan asked casually, like it wasn't a stupid thing to ask and it didn't make him sound like a housewife from New York who casually lived in a California suburb asking her one of her blonde bimbo bitchy friends about her boyfriend. Jon blushed as soon as the words left Ryan's mouth, and he directed his attention to the cars driving by.

"Spencer?" He asked, as though confirming that this was the guy that Ryan knew to talk about.

"Yeah." Ryan leaned against the side of the bus stop, and wondered how Brendon's gum would taste inside of his mouth.

"Wow, you take public transport now?" Said Jon in an awkward voice, avoiding the topic of "his guy."

"What, are you two dating?" Jon never blushed and he was doing exactly that while he scratched the back of his neck and looked around the street again.

"I guess. He's doing well, then. My guy." He smiled and met Ryan's eyes. Not a bad feeling. The bus came and Jon began to realize that Ryan wasn't going to talk, so he opened up about Spencer. And then he kept going. And Jon didn't seem to realize that Ryan was doing anything but listening, so he kept going and Ryan just sort of numbed himself out, the way that felt good.

Too good. Too bad.

Jon didn't belong there, kicking his feet and chattering along about his awfully perfect life that had once been just as lonely as Ryan's but had been quickly filled by a blue eyed boy with a perfect name and perfect everything, fucking, not Ryan. Ryan was broken, imperfect, not good enough for anything. And he didn't want Jon there.

It was a change of attitude, whatever had happened on the bus, and Jon realized it. He always did. Ryan could go on thinking that he was the only person who mattered forever, but Jon would always see him as someone so totally, different.

Jon had been obsessed with him when they had first met. Ryan had seemed so much older, so distant, so cool. He swore and didn't wear band-aids on his skinned knees and never covered those bruises and he smoked and aced all his classes and wore his hair long and kissed boys and spat and still, Jon's infatuation had only gotten him to the point of realizing that Ryan Ross, whether seventeen or seventy, was never going to give more than one fuck about anyone but himself.

He had only come to apologize to convince himself that he had done something right for once.

They reached the house of the dog Ryan was meant to be walking, and Ryan opened the door to hear a loud scream.

There was a teenaged girl curled up with a book on the couch, pointing a shaking finger at Ryan's narrow form. A light brown, oddly short furred cocker spaniel was sitting placidly on the floor, head cocked slightly.

"I'll-I'll call the police on you! I'll do it! Don't think you can get away with this!" When Jon casually stepped into the doorway behind Ryan, her eyes widened even further.

"I'm just here to walk the dog." Ryan announced, plucking a leash off of a nearby coat hanger. Jon nodded as if to confirm, and bent down to run his hand through the dog's soft fur. The girl was still staring at them.

"Wh-but. How-?"

"I have a key. I'm a dog walker. Your parents gave it to me. It's not that hard to understand." Ryan's words were blunt, they had always been, and he hooked the leash to the dog's collar and stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him. Jon was left in the girl's living room, confused.

"Sorry about him. I'll..." She was watching him, terrified. "Go. Bye!" Awkwardly, he waved a bit and tried to smile at her. She didn't make any response.

After he got out of the house, Jon chased Ryan down the street, wishing he could remember how it had been before. When Ryan would wait for him but then demand they race, having a coughing fit at the end and then the coughs would turn into laughs and loving your best friend and being in love with your best friend were two different things and Jon always thought he had gotten rid of the latter feeling until he saw Ryan hurting.

And it seemed like the only way to fix him was to love him.

Like William had, whatever magic he had worked. Magic that had made Ryan smile, made Ryan laugh, made Ryan pleasant to be around. Now it felt like every movement Jon made was going to set Ryan off, and Ryan had been off for quite a while. Now it was just the struggle of getting him back.

"What's wrong with you?" Jon asked, jogging to keep up with Ryan. The dog, whatever it was called, was prancing along with Ryan, pretty happy with the speed they were going at. "Ryan, I swear-"

"You know, just. I don't know." Ryan had stopped abruptly and the dog now just looked confused. "Kids are dumb. I don't know. I need to walk this dog, okay?"

Nothing Jon did was ever enough.

And Ryan was never enough. Coming home was terrifying, sneaking back into the house like he had done as a teenager with eyeshadow smeared over his eyes and glitter dazzling his cheekbones, hair done up with spray and gel. Now it was just him and nothing, no more excitement and life brought in, even if it was just from the gay bar downtown. Ryan missed that, sometimes, how the nightlife in Vegas worked. Boys dressed like girls and girls making out with each other just to make out, not to get off any gross guys; drugs, lights, everyone being anything they wanted.

Ryan wanted to know about Brendon.

He wanted to know where he had snuck out to as a teenager, if he had to hide himself from his parents. What way he showed himself off at school versus the things he kept to himself at home, his friends, his family, him.

Him.

Sneaking into the house to avoid him, not eating dinner to avoid him, leaving the dog downstairs to avoid him, all of it revolved around Brendon. Brendon; the dogs barking, Brendon; the footsteps on the floor, Brendon; at his door.

"Is it an emergency?" Ryan demanded from around his cracked door, acting more angry than he ever would have liked. It seemed like he was never able to get his emotions across the way he wanted, like his fights with Jon and the way he, like, was never able to talk to Brendon.

"You might consider it one if I didn't ask." Smart answer. Shorts, t-shirt, bracelets, his warm smelling bubble gum popped in Ryan's face like it always did. Smile. "Do you mind if I take your dog for a walk?"

"No, that's-that's fine." Brendon then held out his braceleted arm, something held in his hand at the end of it.

"This came for you." An envelope. Ryan took it gingerly and held it between his fingers.

"Thanks." And he shut the door in Brendon's face, as unintentionally rude as ever, the envelope shaking in his fingers and oh my thank fucking god it wasn't from William, or anything, it was just from a publishing company.

Fuck.

He opened it up, getting a paper cut from the edge of the letter inside, and rubbed the blood off of his finger onto the crisp paper as he read "Mr. George Ryan Ross" and realized that this was not a joke, holy shit.

He read it over and over and over again, eyes scanning the words, ingraining them into his head. "Your writing." It was everything he had been waiting for, the experience that he had been expecting to show up at a happy time in his life. "Our company." He had thought that he would tell William and both of them would have been excited but now it was just him, alone in his room with a paper cut, staring at a bloodstained piece of paper. "Write for us."

If they wanted him to write for them, he would.

-

3/19 - Seasons

"Cookie dough. Earth being hard, but not frozen. I wear the fog like a blanket, I wear your smiles like a halo. They shine and everyone can see the light in them except for him. Orange, yellow, ghosts, bats, loneliness. Worst times. Strong coffee, dark trees, cold nights, warm breath. You and I, alone. Bark, not wood. Leaves dead, not alive.

Candle wax. Clear skies, black ice, cold mornings and cold breath. Hopelessness. Lonely more than ever, park benches dusted with snow, skin dusted with tears, same things. Wet shoes, damp clothes, crumpled paper, runny nose. Long nights. Slow burn of bourbon in my chest. Sickness, never health, biting cold, red fingers that burn when they reach heat. Fireplaces are now just lonely places. There's nothing left of me without you.

Rivers. Flowers, allergies, swollen eyes and stuffy noses. Roses bloom red like the blush in your cheeks; the snow melts just like I do, in your arms, in the heat of the sun. New life, me, not you. Me, growing again from the softened dirt, the smell of mulch, lots and lots of rain. Cleaning the worn out streets, reenergizing the world. You, the smell before rain. Me, the feeling after. We are the in between.

Ice cream. Runny, drippy foods, heat, tourists, smiling faces. Sunshine. Shorts and t-shirts, tropical bubble gum, fireworks. Midnight welcomes us and sunrise is taunting, winter sunrises are beautiful and summer sunsets are stunning so maybe you exist as something like midday, ethereal. Fucking hot as hell. Bees buzz, we have to save them, you know, short showers, muddy warm water, stretching our arms out to catch the wind. Don't ever let me go."


	10. We'll Hope For A Good Day

"The somethings."

"No, shut up."

"The Shins. The Calves! Oh, The Thighs! The Thighs, how does that sound?"

"Shut up, what about MAD? Mutually assured destruction?"

"As if that doesn't already exist?"

"If I haven't heard of it, it doesn't exist."

"You sure are full of yourself."

"You know what, I think I love you."

Ryan woke up.

The dreamcatcher that he had precariously hung over his bed hadn't done shit, god, he had gone through a hippie phase that Jon had approved of where he lit incense and smoked lots of weed and meditated and fasted and ate Kosher and grew out his hair and tried making his own clothes, well, he hadn't had bad dreams about conversations that had made him the person who he was back then.

The confession of love really hadn't taken long, they had been lying entangled with each other down in the basement, eating twizzlers and microwave popcorn when William had started talking about stupid band names and it had been right then when Ryan had come to terms with his ultimate infatuation. And he had told William and then they had a done a dumb Lady and the Tramp thing where a twizzler got caught in between their lips by the end of them chewing on either end of it and then they had kissed and it had tasted like sweet things and licorice and love; sometimes Ryan tried convincing himself that he hadn't really been in love.

But it was never fair, because he had. There was no way to deny it anymore, and he just had to move on from loving William to loving something else. And so he went to love what wouldn't leave him.

Dewy mornings and hazy sunrises in the chilly yard, those wouldn't leave him. Pants soaked from the damp grass and hair stiff from the cold morning spring air, Ryan wrapped an old blanket that smelled strongly of marijuana around him, leaned against the fence built around their yard, and sunk into the overgrown grass with content.

He didn't know where Dottie was. Maybe she was asleep down with Bogart and Brendon, or maybe she would be waking up alone on the cold wooden floor of the main level. Trapped between the person who she was meant to love or the person who had a dog that she could play with and a room that was warm and a heart that was caring enough to actually take her for walks.

The sun shone a pale yellow over his sad little empire, and he curled the blanket tighter around him, feeling cold and surprisingly pleasant. He sat by himself for a while, eyes watching as the sky turned from a lazy grey to a clear blue. Ryan needed to get out of his head. Out of Seattle, somewhere else, somewhere where love couldn't die so easily.

"Morning." Ryan looked to his side to see Brendon, wearing what looked like swim trunks, holding his braceleted arm over his eyes to shield them from the rising sun. "Mind if I join you?" Ryan shrugged, not wanting to drive Brendon away right at that very moment. It definitely wasn't a bad moment, but Ryan felt a little hollow and really, really wouldn't mind feeling a little less empty. Brendon sat down next to him, his body a little tense, making everything feel sort of unnecessarily awkward.

"Here," Ryan said, pulling one arm out of the blanket and offering it to Brendon, who then wrapped it around himself. It felt better that way, sharing. Warm together instead of cold apart. Maybe, that was all Ryan wanted in life. Sharing warmth and okayness and fun emotions shared with happiness and love instead of isolating himself in a cold, dark place that seemed just a little too similar to his bedroom.

Brendon began to sort of curl into the blanket when he squinted up his eyes, the cute way, and then sneezed. Ryan was amazed.

"This blanket reeks," Brendon said, shaking his head like a wet dog. "Did you use this thing as rolling paper?" Ryan laughed, he always felt on the verge of laughter around Brendon, and shrugged in a way that adjusted the blanket on their shoulders.

"It's okay to partake in recreational activities from time to time..." His words were cut off by Brendon's giggle, and Ryan was amazed by how bright his eyes were, how clear he seemed; the vibe he gave off was something otherworldly and incandescent and somehow he had lit up Ryan's entire morning in a way that the sun was apparently able to just by insulting the way the old blanket smelled, no, Ryan wouldn't have traded it for anything.

"Well, come on, you've smoked pot before." Ryan stated, knowing full well that a human like Brendon couldn't have lasted long without someone or other offering him a joint and him, of course, not passing it up.

"Well, of course, this is Washington, isn't it?"

"I think of you as a modern day hippie, you know?" Ryan said, taking note of the way both of them were throwing ridiculous rhetorical questions around as though they didn't take away from the conversation.

"What's a modern day hippie?" Brendon asked, rearranging his hair with the hand attached to the braceleted arm. "Or, let me rephrase it." Ryan watched him, unable to keep his eyes off of Brendon's face, Brendon in general. Brendon. "What makes a modern day hippie?"

"These," Ryan said immediately, picking at one of Brendon's bracelets, "for one. You smoke weed, wear those bracelets, play guitar, like dogs, wear swim trunks as normal shorts-"

"For the record, my other shorts are dirty. And if that's what qualifies to be a hippie, I know more hippies than I can count." And they just sat that way, eyes on each other, wondering what the fuck they were going to do with themselves. "And you don't seem like you're not a hippie." Brendon added as an afterthought, almost like it was meant to be an insult. Ryan's eyebrow raise made Brendon blush a bit, fuck, and pull the blanket a bit tighter around him.

"You listen to Joy Division, smoke weed, write-"

"You know I write?" And then there was less of a smile on Brendon's face and more of an inquisitive look. Knowing that Ryan was a writer was like uncovering his biggest secret, as though suddenly he knew everything about Ryan's life, like he had read every single page that Ryan's words had touched, like he had taken a trip inside Ryan's head.

"Of course."

"Is it obvious?" As though Ryan was talking about a bad haircut he had gotten or a plagiarized bit of his essay- "is it that obvious?" Always paranoid.

"Yeah." Brendon stretched out his legs into the tall grass and watched as they disappeared into the mass of green and beige. Tired, he leaned his head on Ryan's shoulder and moved his body in a way that it didn't feel awkward for either of them. Just a little too familiar and a little too comfortable. The air was still cold and Ryan's breath was still warm enough to show up in the air and Brendon's lips were very nicely shaped and the blanket did reek and the fence was a little spiky against Ryan's back but it was fine, everything was fine.

"Do you like poetry?" Brendon asked.

"No."

"Do you actually smoke cigarettes?" At that, Ryan smiled.

"I told myself that I wouldn't get addicted when I started. So no, I don't." Brendon laughed, again, such a full, good laugh. Perfect, god. Ryan was losing his mind.

"Are you serious?"

"Yes." So Brendon tucked his head back into Ryan's shoulder as if it were a rehearsed thing that they had done many times over and mumbled into Ryan's neck-

"I didn't get any sleep last night."

"I did, but I'm not sure if it counted."

Which was how they ended up back inside and warming themselves up only to leave the house again, Brendon driving in Ryan's shitty car while they listened to The Chromatics play on Brendon's iPhone, a modern wonder that Ryan had gotten the time to explore when Brendon had shouted instructions on how to access Spotify while he navigated a largely confusing traffic circle.

"Man, I love this song." Brendon announced as the solemn "Into the Black" played from his tinny phone speakers. "It's better to burn out than to fade away. Fuckin' love those lyrics." Ryan, feet up on the dashboard, yawned.

"Do you believe that? I think I'd rather fade away."

"Shut up, you wouldn't." The way Brendon spoke the words hit Ryan so close to the heart that he almost began crying; it was the same joking way that he had addressed William back in the days when neither of them got offended by stupid things. Would everything always have to go the same way for him? They sat in silence while Ryan swallowed the lump in his throat and Brendon continuously exhibited examples of reckless driving while trying to catch glimpses of street signs.

"What, does 'shut up' offend you?" Brendon finally asked when they had turned onto the street that they were looking for.

"No." Fuck you, Ryan, if you tune yourself out right now I swear to god I'm going to kick your ass- "No, I was just thinking about that. The burn out or fade away thing. Interesting shit." Brendon parked the car and turned to look at Ryan. Warm spring eyes. None of this was okay.

Outside, it was drizzling lightly. Brendon twisted a bit in the rain, arms outstretched.

"I hope it gets harder," he said in a longing voice, squinting his eyes a bit against the cold raindrops that had accumulated while Ryan wasn't looking. The morning had seemed clear but the present was so much clearer, and Ryan couldn't help himself by saying-

"That's what she said." Brendon didn't laugh this time, not really, he just smiled really big and that made Ryan feel just as good as a laugh could.

"Maybe you do act your age. Or maybe you have, like, the humor of a fourth grader."

"I didn't know what humor was in fourth grade." That was funnier than Ryan's dumb joke, and Brendon giggled as he pulled his shirt, now spotted with light rain drops, back from his body.

"Should we go inside?" He asked, nodding his head at the fabled coffeehouse that they had found.

"Nah, I think you should use your swim trunks to your advantage." Ryan's reply was snarky and Brendon wasn't having it, but the look on his face was so different than anything, man, Ryan would give anything to find out what went on in his head.

Well, sometimes it would be nice to find out what was actually going on inside his own head. Following a damp Brendon Urie into the place, like, what the fuck was he doing? How had he been convinced to leave the house without throwing a mini-fit about it, why had he been sitting outside that morning, why had Brendon, the alleged homeless man living in his basement, come outside to sit with him and make fun of his blanket and call him a sort of hippie and rest his head on his shoulder? Why the fuck were they getting coffee together?

Ryan paused outside the glass door to think, just for a second, to remember who he was and why he was there and what his name was and, just, what he was doing with himself. What was he doing with himself?

"Hey, Brendon." Ryan said, now inside the store. There were some people hanging around, and the atmosphere was, well. A little too much. Dark wood with little silver hints and shit, it was modern hipster hybrid heaven and Ryan felt a little uncomfortable. Brendon seemed fine though, yeah, Brendon seemed like he could fit in anywhere.

"Yeah?"

"What are we doing here?" Brendon looked confused, a look that looked sort of out of place on him. Ryan was too used to people around him being confident in order to make sure that he was sure that there were supportive people in his life.

"We're here to get coffee." Brendon said, because yeah, of course, if modern hipster hybrids hung out there then of course there was coffee. It was fancy coffee, that too, the kind that had been good enough to review in some article that Brendon had read and just came to Ryan with; what else was there to do in Seattle other than drink coffee?

"Right." And they got their coffee and Brendon paid for it because apparently he felt a little guilty for the last time both of them had been around coffee together; they had gone and adopted Bogart and Brendon had stood out in the busy street, bouncing on his feet in the freezing cold weather with an empty plastic sandwich container in one hand and a white and green Starbucks cup tilted up as he drowned the stuff inside.

Look, Ryan already had memories to think of with him.

They sat at a table with tall bar chairs in the back next to a window. Ryan watched raindrops race each other down the clear windows as the coffee steamed up in his face.

Brendon watched him from across the table, taking in the sight because, damn, Ryan was pretty. 

He matched with the atmosphere, all dark brown and cold with that little flash of silver, that little different part of him that wasn't exactly the same as the rest of him.

Ryan Ross.

His hair was too long, a rich dark brown color that would have been so glossy and was ruined a bit by the fact that he hadn't washed it for a while but that was okay because it was still pretty. It was wavy, a bit, and curled down around his neck and came down around his eyes, not like bangs, but close, in a way. He wore these sort of hipster glasses with black rims and had these eyes behind them, dark brown eyes that matched up with his hair that were full of intelligence and wit and everything in the world that Brendon appreciated.

And then there was his nose, really a very cute nose, it curved up at the end and then sloped back down to skin and his lips, they weren't bad lips. They were pouty, a bit, and this lovely shade of pink that Brendon really found himself wanting to make into a string that he could braid up and tie around his wrist, make it into something solid that he could carry with him and look at when he wanted to. Or maybe he would have to settle for never letting Ryan go.

Ryan crossed his legs at the knee under him and rested his feet on the little bar of the chair that existed above the floor while Brendon swung his legs like a child. It was raining outside and Ryan's coffee steamed up in his face. In all reality, it was perfect.

After sitting for a while, they finished their drinks and stared at each other because there really wasn't anything much better to do. Ryan then suggested that they go do something other than that, though it wasn't a bad way to pass time, and Brendon took him up on the offer. When they got outside, it felt colder than it had before. Brendon's breath fogged in the cold air. It was pouring.

They ended up vaguely near the Space Needle, though closer than the way that everything in Seattle was "vaguely near the Space Needle", and next to a huge fountain. Brendon knew the location well but didn't need to tell Ryan anything about his long history with public parks, and was pleased that it wasn't too crowded. Or not crowded at all. Rain had a way of driving people indoors. The pair sat down on the soaking wet ground near the fountain side by side, and Brendon exhaled and relaxed his shoulders as they sat.

"You like the rain?" Ryan asked, wondering why he wanted a cigarette. He also wondered how he would manage to light and then proceed to smoke it if he did actually have access to one. It was like how he had spent a good number of weeks thinking about fires under the ocean when it was a topic that didn't need all his stupid creative attention drawn to it. Brendon deserved his stupid creative attention.

Brendon deserved all of his attention.

"Oh, yeah. I like everything. Rain, shine, anything that means that life is happening." Brendon was truly the real hippie out of the pair of them.

"I love the rain. Best thing about this goddamned city. The rain." Ryan looked up at the sky and squinted into the drops falling on his face. Both of them were soaked through and absolutely freezing but it still felt a little daring and even more so revolutionary, like they would end up changed people from sitting in the frigid downpour.

It was quiet for a while until Brendon said something about being cold and so Ryan let them get back into his car and drive home. The seats were soiled with rainwater.

Home, again, both of them took warm seperate showers on their separate floors that were too separate for Ryan, man, him and his stupid rules. After sitting around debating himself within his mind, Ryan crept down two flights of stairs until he ended up in Brendon's basement.

Brendon was sitting on the floor, messing around with a block of wood and a knife.

"Hey." He looked up. His hair was damp but drying so it looked sort of fluffy. He was wearing a faded lavender t-shirt and soft big plaid pajama pants.

"Want to learn how to carve wood?" Ryan didn't answer but sat down, looking over Brendon's carvings.

"Did you teach yourself this?" He asked, picking one up of what looked like either Buddy Holly or Rivers Cuomo. Irony at its finest.

"Yeah. I'm not so good at people, though." Brendon's voice was sort of joking as he gently took the piece out of Ryan's hand and replaced it with a dark brown piece of wood; one that matched Ryan's hair and Ryan's eyes and Ryan, just, him in general. "What do you want one of?"

"Uh..." Brendon pulled away without an answer and began whittling away, his scarred hand twisting the wood around while his other hand carved at it.

"A flower, that'll work. Basic enough. You're a semi-hippie, you should like flowers." Ryan smiled and watched Brendon work. It was something else. It wasn't like writing, because anyone could write. Anyone could draw, hit a key on the piano, throw some paint around. This was completely something else, and Ryan loved it. The wood slipped and Brendon's knife nicked his hand, not anything bad, but Ryan still winced.

"Still shaky sometimes," Brendon muttered, licking at the small amount of blood leaking from the wound. "Want to try?" He handed the knife and the wood to Ryan, who looked at the design cluelessly. "Just carve out under there." Brendon pointed, and guided the blade in Ryan's hand. He dug into the wood and cut diagonally like Brendon had, back and forth a bit. After making little to no progress, Brendon took the flower back.

"I'm not finishing this. You will eventually. Practice makes perfect." Brendon was staying put and he was staying put with rain and coffee and wood carvings and flowers and sitting there, warm and happy on the basement floor, Ryan had never felt more right.


	11. How To Disappear Completely

Brendon was carving out things over a metal pan borrowed from the kitchen on the floor while Ryan played with the dogs; both of them exchanging laughs and conversation and things that Ryan missed. It felt bad, even, because he felt like he had when William had first shown up. And Brendon was a different person than William, of course, but the atmosphere was exactly the same and Ryan didn't want to feel like he was warming up to anyone anytime soon but Brendon was sitting right there and he was just such a pretty sight that Ryan didn't want to tell him that he was fully unable to form any sort of relationship with him in the near future.

It wasn't the nicest thing to break to anyone. The inability to communicate with them and enjoy their company because, god dammit, Ryan Ross just got attached too easily and was down on his back flat on the floor when Brendon had the audacity to say-

"There's so much I wonder about you." Just a random, pensive, passing thought that he had decided to speak aloud. Ryan was holding Bogart in the air and playing airplane games with him like a baby human while Dottie lay over his stomach. There had been a warm sort of silence in the air, filled enough by Brendon's little curses, the sound of his knife, and the noises Ryan was making at Bogart, but not any conversation.

Not really.

"Like what?" Ryan asked, first to Brendon, and then beamed at Bogart and wiggled his paws around a bit. "Like what, Bogart, huh? Like what?" He said that in a baby voice and missed the glance that Brendon sent over, a sly smiling one that seemed a little too familiar.

"Well, I dunno, like, what's your middle name?" Ryan brought Bogart down so they were face to face and proceeded to kiss his nose. Then he sat up, forcing Dottie to unceremoniously slide off his chest and onto the floor; placing Bogart down next to her.

"If we get to ask each other dumb questions, we at least need to be drunk." Brendon looked a little disbelieving, the last time he had seen Ryan sort of drunk was when they had made the cookies and they had had Crisco problems but Ryan seemed like a ridiculously silly drunk and Brendon didn't want to leave the house again to go to the ABC store and get anything to actually, like, get them drunk. And he was a little confused about the "dumb question" because it was just asking about a middle name, but it was okay. Ryan was a little strange. 

"What about weed, though?" Brendon asked, proving that he was, in his final form, a real hippie. Considering it, Ryan nodded.

"Fine." He watched Brendon fall over the mattress on the floor to reach over and grab a box on the other side of it. "You sleep with this stuff?" He asked, watching Brendon closely as he sat back on the floor, opening the box.

"Gotta keep it safe." He pulled out a little baggie filled with flowers, a neon orange grinder, rolling paper, and a bag of roaches. The supplies were placed in between Ryan and Brendon, the latter of who went to town with the grinder while Ryan watched in confusion.

"You don't have a bong or anything?" Brendon burst out laughing, a perfectly bright sound for the warm house, and let it morph into giggles until he realized, eventually, that Ryan hadn't been kidding.

"You don't know how to roll a joint?" He asked, for some reason, finding a sort of humor in this. Ryan had always been so stoned off of secondhand smoke when he was younger that someone's blunt would always make their way to him, he didn't have to make his own. Perhaps it was useless dependency on people who were more drug savvy than him, like Brendon, but he shrugged in a blushing silence that was filled by the squeak of Brendon's grinder. "Here," he said, tapping out the ground marijuana into a strip of rolling paper, "watch and learn."

Brendon looked good like that, legs crossed, half rolled blunt held out in front of him, hair hanging over his head in concentration. Ryan paid attention to the best of his ability but he got lost when the roach came in and then Brendon licked at the paper, holy shit, and handed it to Ryan.

"Go for it." A little nervous, Ryan took the provided lighter and held it up to the end of the blunt. It caught and he breathed in, holding the smoke in his lungs. As he exhaled, the slow rush of pleasure filled up his head and a lazy smile found his face. Too used to sharing, he tried to hand it back to Brendon, who shook his head. "I've got plenty. Have your own. It's quality shit."

"Sure is," mumbled Ryan, taking another drag on it. Brendon rolled himself another blunt and began to laugh when he saw Ryan.

"You're holding the thing like a cigarette." Ryan looked down at his hands, not realizing what he was doing wrong.

"Huh?" Brendon took a puff from his own joint, showing Ryan the correct way to hold it.

"You rolled it like a cigarette." Ryan protested, pushing his index finger and thumb together with the edge of the joint in between.

"It's just because I know what I'm doing." Brendon replied, watching Ryan unknowingly switch his fingers back into the cigarette holding position. "What a baby," Brendon teased, leaning back against the wall. "Can I ask you stuff now?" The air was already getting a little hazy, the room being hot boxed not with Ryan's stupid cigarette smoke, just with plain old cannabis.

"Go for it." Dottie and Bogart had wandered upstairs together, the smell too pungent for their sensitive dog noses, and now it just left Ryan and Brendon; Brendon and Ryan. Together.

"So what's your middle name?" Ryan laughed, his head cloudy, faced with a question that was a little more complicated for him than people who had been given respectable names at birth.

"It's complicated." Brendon's smile was the sole thing lighting up Ryan's world anymore, his laugh a full sound that Ryan could never describe in writing as much as he'd like to. Brendon was fantastically brilliant and amazing and Ryan couldn't help feeling so guilty every time he tried to capture Brendon's light in words, he was a writer after all, but even experiencing Brendon was a perfectly fine thing and Ryan melted into the words he was hearing.

"I ask you the most basic question," Brendon coughed a bit, "and you don't even have an answer for that?"

"Fine!" Said Ryan, a little louder than he would have liked. "My first name is George, middle name is Ryan, and last name is Ross. With a 'the third.'" Twirling the joint in his hands, Brendon grinned.

"Very fancy. I'm Brendon Boyd Urie. Boring."

"Mmm. Have you ever lived in a shopping cart?" Ryan asked, moving the subject to the obviously more important questions. Brendon subjected into a curious silence, and picked apart some soft flowers in his hands.

"Why would I have...?"

"Dunno. When you showed up, I don't know why, I came to the conclusion that you were a homeless person that Jon had found out on the street." Brendon's smile seemed a little sad now, and he just took another drag instead of replying.

"Is your ex, William, is he the reason you're so torn up?" The warmth and comforting air that the weed provided felt like it all had been sucked out of the room in a great vacuum. Ryan's eyes widened, sort of, while Brendon lost himself in a cloud of smoke that he blew away while smiling, always smiling, while Ryan just. Sat.

Torn up?

Was that what he was, torn up? Made him sound like something useless and straight out of a magazine, perfect for the scrapbooks or maybe a fire pit. Torn up. Torn up.

"Torn up?"

"Y'know. You're sad about him." Ryan didn't know what to think about that, about anything; he wasn't fucking sad about William. He wasn't anything about William. Torn up. Maybe that was the right way to put it. In this situation, Brendon was the one who knew how to use the right words.

"What makes you think that?" A laugh and more smoke out of Brendon's mouth.

"It's obvious. What, did he, like, hurt you?" Ryan coughed on the warm smoke coming out of his throat.

"No. He just left me. Made me think I loved him." Brendon looked suddenly clear for a moment, like he had broken through to the point of a high where he was less silly and more serious. Had time to consider things that Ryan didn't want to talk about.

"Did you?"

"Love him?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah." It sort of hurt Ryan's chest to say that, and this throat felt all closed up and choked. The weed was messing with his head but not in the pleasurable way that it had about five minutes ago. The world outside Brendon's window seemed dark and cold, the same sort of world that Ryan had been so terrified of earlier on that year.

"Have you been in love?" Ryan asked, directing the conversation away from him. Brendon shook his head no, surprisingly. The way his lips curled around his joint and the way his damp hair shadowed his neck and the way his t-shirt hung off his frame said otherwise, really, Brendon was a work of art. Despite the sappiness and the utter mundaneness of the saying, Ryan couldn't help but thinking that it was true. Brendon didn't seem hard to love. But maybe the whole point was getting him to love back.

"I don't think so. Wasn't allowed to love anyone until I found a nice mormon girl to settle down with. Couldn't date until I was eighteen." Ryan whistled.

"Wouldn't peg you for a mormon."

"I'm not. Never really was. What does love feel like?" It was a nice question that made Ryan relax again, leaning back against the wall. The room was all smoky and Brendon's eyes had begun to look just a little red.

"It's like, when someone mentions someone or something you love, it makes you smile. Or want to smile."

"Love is smiles?" Yes. It was perfect, the way he put it. Ryan smiled at him.

"Yeah."

The conversation continued late into the night, sprawled onto Brendon's mattress, feeling the texture of each other's fingernails, talking about whether dogs were just as aware of humans and didn't base everything off of repeated actions. Ryan didn't know when he fell asleep but he knew when he woke up and that Brendon had gone. Not gone, not like William, but wasn't laying on his back next to him the way he had been before.

Tangled up in Brendon's sheets, Ryan had this haunting feeling that they had ended up fucking, or something, but alcohol usually ended up in sex and weed just ended up in, like, sleep. Or a lack thereof. It was raining and Brendon had opened the basement doors, most likely to let out the air that the pair of them had tainted the night before, but the tile floor near the doors was wet with rainwater. The sound of William's stupid piano was oddly comforting, and Ryan stretched his sleepy limbs like a cat of some sort, and rolled over to look at Brendon.

He was sat at the piano so casually, one leg up on the bench, the other one holding down a pedal that made it sound all echoey. That rich voice of his was humming along to Piano Man, of course, and he seemed to only really be playing with one of his hands. Ryan had to shake himself out of his mesmerization because it was completely uncalled for to be thinking of Brendon like this.

Unprofessional.

"Brendon?"

"Hmm?" He turned around, fluffing up his hair, and letting go of the sustain pedal.

"We didn't fuck last night, did we? I've got this weird taste in my mouth, and-"

"We just made mac n cheese and fell asleep." It sounded so unappealing like that, but Brendon's lazy smile made it all worth it. Getting high and making mac n cheese and talking and cuddling really wasn't bad either, so Ryan just nodded.

"Are you gay?" Brendon had fully turned himself around now, and brought his legs up to cross on the glossy piano bench under him.

"I don't know." He answered truthfully. Like that, in front of the piano, bare legs crossed, t-shirt hanging off of him, hair all messy, bracelets array; he looked so young. Not young as in a childlike way, but just young, innocent, free of worry. Ryan couldn't even begin to understand how many worries Brendon actually had, but the way he presented himself seemed so right. So lovely. So confident, so like he believed in himself and knew who he truly was.

"Would you fuck me?" Ryan hoped it didn't sound like an invitation, and watched as Brendon's eyes flicked up and down his body before he shrugged and nodded. "Good to know," Ryan said, smiling a bit. Now Brendon was blushing a bit, and got up off of the bench, stretching. Bones and skin and muscle, all hidden away under all those bracelets. Human anatomy. A masterpiece, again.

"I'm gonna walk the dogs."

"Have you got a computer?" Brendon raised his eyebrows at Ryan's sudden question, and gestured at his mattress.

"Laptop, yeah. It's somewhere over there." He wasn't organized, but neither was Ryan. Nothing was wrong with a little mess sometimes.

"Can I use it?"

"Yeah, password is polishass." Ryan's eyebrow raise didn't seem to interest Brendon very much, and he added on- "Inside joke."

"Can I take it upstairs?" Ryan wasn't a fan of using other people's things because it made them his, and it placed them in his care. It had always been stressful, always been weird, accidentally breaking people's pencils at school, dropping something he was asked to hold, ruining the clothes he asked to borrow; destroying everything. Maybe it felt too deep just asking Brendon if he could take his computer upstairs but, god, Ryan didn't want to lose his head again and do something stupid with something else that didn't belong to him.

Sort of similar to the way that William had done something stupid to something that didn't belong to him. Ryan had never been William's. And Ryan hadn't asked for the stupid act of getting broken up with, no. William had just decided that it had been the right thing to do.

"Do whatever, really. Just give it back when I need it." And Brendon disappeared upstairs, feet falling lightly on the carpeted steps.

Ryan liked Brendon's room so much more than his own. Dejectedly stomping back upstairs into his own room already brought on a sort of melancholy feeling in his chest. It was so cold up there, and everything was so blank since he had burned anything that reminded him of William which just went to show how much William really meant in his life.

But he had to get his head out of his ass and do his work because he was a real fucking human being who had things to do, work to do, emails to send, and writing to do.

It was nice having an "F" key that worked.

And it was scary how fast the publishing company wrote back to him when he finally got his email fixed. They liked his work. It wasn't like Ryan didn't like his own work because it was his, of course, and he could get rid of the things he didn't like. But basing a series off of the somewhat unfortunate events of his life with his name right there on top of it felt a little weird, and wasn't something that he was used to. Before, his name would be right on top of it but it wasn't about him getting his heart fucked with because William had edited those pieces and now anything he wrote about was all William, all "him," all little side jabs and sly words that were so obvious to Ryan but so "ex boyfriend" to everyone else.

Writing about heartbreak was funny because there was no "kind of understanding." It was either that someone felt it all too hard and could relate to everything he wrote, or they couldn't understand a single word of it. Anyone could say that they understood it, but there always has to be a certain level of perception in someone's head for them to realize that they can relate to a dumb gay depressed writer who had nothing better to do with his life than whine about how he hadn't wanted the relationship to end.

He wasn't fucking special.

4/14 - Ghost Towns In The Ocean

I am not ruined.

He will not ruin me.

I am not a wreck, something you see on the news, they've never heard my name, the hungry press will never learn anything of my life. I am not a terrorist attack, not an American presidential election, not an airplane crash, I am what I've made of myself, and I am strong.

His lips have never wet my neck, his eyes have never darkened and batted at me, my body has never shivered at the light touch of his skin, he is what he is without me and I am everything without him.

I've built myself an empire in the sea, wrapped yarn around the walls, tied balloons to the top, I awake every morning in a different place. No one lives here except for me and the notes I collect, green bottles float around my head, I can never open them. Love letters flung to the sea, suicide notes with too much care put into them rolled tightly, "no one's ever going to find this."

There's no gravity in my ghost town. If I remove one of the notes from a bottle, the ink will run and smear. It will be ruined. Nothing is ruined in my ghost town. I live alone, and this is why no one can hurt me. If there's no one to hurt me, there's nothing that can be ruined here.

I live among the fish and the reefs, I swim myself dizzy and spin circles like a mermaid, I'm so magic and I'm so whole without you.

I live alone in my ghost town. Not for a second do I ever think to feel that you have made any difference in my life.

I am not ruined.

Nothing is ruined in my ghost town in the ocean.


	12. Only Love

Brendon Urie had never understood why Snoopy was called Snoopy. This thought only crossed his mind when, late at night, he was doing his fair share of snooping. In retrospect, it wasn't his fault that Ryan had left his email right open and ready for inspection, he had essentially begged to use Brendon's computer in the first place, so Brendon did have a right to take a glance at what was in Ryan's inbox.

A lot were from a mysterious woman named Maria Maciel. The alliteration warmed Brendon's heart, but the continuous emails from her to Ryan confused him. And, of course, he wanted to know what she was saying but opening the emails led to a whole new breach of privacy that Brendon was going to go ahead and roll with because curiosity killed the cat, not the human.

Maria Maciel's emails were opened, and hey, holy shit. Holy shit. Brendon read and reread Ryan's emails from her, flipping back and forth between them, connecting them with those ones from that company that he thought were spam-

Holy shit.

Ryan was famous.

Not exactly famous, really, but more well known that anyone Brendon had ever met. A writer, of course he was a writer, but Brendon had always been under the impression that he was the unsuccessful type of writer that wrote and smoked and drank coffee and used typewriters but never got anywhere in life. The kind of writer that complained about their work being perfect but "no one ever wanted to read it!" That was Brendon's whole reasoning for moving in because he thought Ryan was one of those starving artists who would end up suicidal with some office job except Ryan was fucking published and a hell of a lot smarter than Brendon had ever thought to give him credit for.

Snapping the stale gum in his mouth, Brendon shifted his weight and brought the laptop up closer to him. As he went from website to website and email to email, he discovered more and more about Ryan that he never thought he would, jesus, he wrote a book. And Snoopy's name still didn't make sense to Brendon but this snooping adventure had brought him into a whole other world.

And Brendon wanted to read Ryan's damn book.

He got up earlier than he ever willingly would the next morning and skipped getting coffee to take the bus to a different part of town where the one place he had resolved never to return to was housed. It was unusually bright for Seattle and Brendon had the feeling that Ryan would be staying inside because of that, christ, Ryan.

Brendon liked thinking about Ryan, especially these days when Sarah came up in his mind a little too often. He didn't expect her to be at the bookstore, not at this time in the morning, but still felt completely unwanted as he walked inside the little place that she had been so proud of. He had an escape plan worked out in his head if she did end up being there, but. No.

Never a morning person, she had always said, and they had had long conversations about coffee and energy drinks and sugar rushes to keep them awake instead of the actual things they discussed themselves; being homeless and tired had never been fun but at least words and each other could manage to improve things, even if it was only marginally.

Her bookstore was something out of Portlandia. Filled with these crazy feminists who weren't exactly feminists and just had a terrible vendetta against, like, all men, and all had dyed hair and piercings and tattoos and considered themselves hardcore lesbians when half of them just did it to fit in.

Brendon had never felt more hated in his life than when he walked into the bookstore and the two women whispering behind the counter looked up at him with glares etched into their faces.

"Do you need something?" Asked the first lady in a venomous tone. Her hair was short, half shaved, and bright blue. She wore messy eyeliner, had an industrial bar through her ear, and a sleeve down her right arm which was ruined by the knuckle tattoos that ruined the clear skin of her left arm. The other lady had a sidecut, pinkish hair, and both a septum and nose ring. There were neat tattoos outlined by little boxes up and down her arms. Brendon liked her better.

"Hi, um, I'm. Do you have any books by Ryan Ross?" The two looked at each other as if having a conversation with their expressions, and turned back to him. Blue spoke again.

"Yeah, we do. Who are you?" Brendon felt a little like he had done something wrong, and wondered if they made every single customer at the store introduce themselves.

"My name is Brendon. I'm, uh, Sarah's friend?" They relaxed at that but Brendon wanted to punch himself in the face because sometimes the wrong things came out when they shouldn't because, fuck, he shouldn't have said that.

"Sarah's never mentioned you." Purple mumbled, her eyes looking Brendon up and down. Brendon could imagine exactly why Sarah had never mentioned him.

"Yeah, well. Weird. Do you have Ryan Ross's book?" Blue sighed, really loudly, and made these weird eyes at Purple.

"Did you know Ryan Ross? You seem very interested in him." Blue said lazily, knowing that she was wasting Brendon's time.

"Did I?" Another exchanged glance and Brendon was quickly running out of patience. Searching through the ridiculous stacks of books in the store probably wouldn't get him out of there any faster, though, so he just continued in the stupid conversation that he had been dragged into.

"Oh, we have a theory that Ryan Ross killed himself." Purple announced. Brendon coughed, loud, and stared at them.

"You think Ryan Ross is dead?" This was almost humorous, the way they both nodded proudly as if they had killed Ryan themselves. "Well, great, but do you have his book?"

"Do you have any reason to believe he's alive?" Blue demanded, leaning a little aggressively over the counter.

"No!" Brendon said, raising his hands in defeat. "I don't know shit about him, I just want to read his book-"

"-But have you read his blog?" Brendon stared at them, feeling clueless and lead on and fucked over. They stared right back at him with these stupid grins on their faces that made him feel like some kind of dumb asshole. As he moved to leave the store, Purple spoke up.

"Are you really Sarah's Brendon?" They had been lying the whole time. Of course Sarah had mentioned him, and now Sarah seemed to own him. Brendon paused at the door, his back to the girls, debating actually involving himself in the conversation. This wasn't what he wanted. "I mean, is what she said about you true?" That hurt.

What had she said about him? Sarah had always come up with these backgrounds for Brendon by the end of his time with her, trying to give him a bad rap. Sometimes he was the drug dealer that had sold her out, sometimes he was the boyfriend that beat her up, sometimes he was the older brother who didn't do enough to take care of her. Always, it was something bad and always, it was a lie. He had been a puppet in her little fantasy world. At one point, he had considered that maybe she was way strung out on drugs or something, but it wasn't that. It wasn't anything unnatural.

There had just been something wrong with her. And he wasn't in the mood for asking what this new story was. What had she made him this time? Rapist? Stranger? Ex-best friend?

"What do you think?" He said to Purple, and left the store. The ringing bell sounded over his head as he opened and closed the door, and the sun warmed his skin as he stepped out of the shade of the bookstore's canopy.

Ryan was standing in the very same sunshine, just on the outskirts of town, right off a bike path in a very white and very suburban suburb, waiting for this dog to take a fucking shit. The dog kept pacing and stopping and sniffing and sitting and then deciding that he had picked the wrong place to shit so he kept walking and Ryan had been there for maybe twenty minutes, baking in the hot sun, waiting. Finally, the dog just gave up and made his way back to Ryan.

"Are you done? Are you serious?" Ryan demanded, giving the dog a shameful look. The dog just smiled at Ryan. Ryan wanted to do anything but smile. It had been one of those days where getting out of bed hadn't been bad but anything after that had been too hard. There had been no point in really getting dressed, brushing teeth, eating breakfast, taking Dottie and Bogart for a walk. It didn't help that Brendon had been acting distant but it wasn't anyone else's fault but his own, really, it never was.

Never in control of his emotions, a goddamned adult who was still reeling from a breakup that was old fucking news; Ryan was just a mess. The only thing he was in charge of was the dumb dog he was walking who he dragged home because the thing just refused to shit and there was Ryan, working a job that teenagers got over the summer, and he just wanted to go home and not write for the company that was begging for his words in their grasp.

But he wasn't able to walk up the stairs when he got home because it was just too much work and, as always, the floor looked more inviting so he just lay on the floor and waited for someone to come pick him up.

The door opened and Brendon was there but Brendon wasn't there to make him feel better, Brendon was there to say dumb shit like-

"Have you killed yourself?" There was a very long silence in the house. On the floor, Ryan pondered Brendon's words. He could take them to otherworldly philosophies on bridges at three in the morning, but they didn't sound exactly right in the random context. Ryan sat up, messing with his hair, and gave Brendon a quizzical look. Brendon opened his mouth and then shut it and then proceeded to open it again. "I mean, have you tried?" Ryan sighed and cracked his knuckles. "I mean-"

"Can you just spit it out?" Brendon looked all awkward and Ryan finally stood up, leaning against the couch for the only support it looked like he would be provided with.

"Have you, like, faked your own death?" Brendon knew that he had worded the question correctly and that he knew the answer just by the way Ryan's face paled and his eyes widened. "You fucking have!"

"Not really! Not-"

"People think you fucking killed yourself, man, that isn't okay!"

"They don't know who I am, they don't know me! They just knew this, fake, me- how the fuck do you know all this?" The couch wasn't giving Ryan any comfort and, honestly, he was feeling a tiny bit ambushed.

"You- wrote a book! And had a blog? And faked a suicide! Do you think that's funny?" Brendon seemed a little too upset for this topic that he really didn't understand, and Ryan was trying to find what little patience he had left inside of him.

"I didn't fake a suicide. That's just shitty." Ryan's voice sounded a little hoarse saying that, and Brendon took a deep breath.

"But you left people under the impression that you did." Ryan shrugged at that.

"People think what people think." It was quiet then, and Ryan was waiting for Brendon to come up with something new to say. It was like when they had just met: a silent standoff between them about who was going to talk first.

"But. Just... why?" Brendon had been the more mature person this time around, and Ryan felt this sinking feeling in his chest as their words turned away from the curses of an argument and molded into the slow answers of a conversation.

"I needed a fresh start." Ryan said, his voice defeated. "You must know how it feels." 'Must' sounded so definite but Brendon wasn't going to say that Ryan was wrong. In fact, he was exactly right. Brendon's fresh start had been moving into Ryan's basement.

"Yeah. I get you." Ryan sort of deflated at that, a look of relief appearing on his face. He almost seemed like he was going to start crying, which rightfully terrified Brendon, but instead just did this shaky sigh thing and ran his hands back through his hair.

"I feel like I'm going crazy." Ryan said, his voice this time surprisingly void of emotion. "I hate it here. I hate it! I don't know why I fucking came here! Any city in this country and my dumb ass thought I could live it up in Seattle-"

"Hey." Brendon interrupted. Ryan trailed off, though unwillingly, and stared at Brendon. It was less of a stare and more of this hopeless look that seemed much less apathetic than usual and made Brendon a little curious as to what other emotions Ryan was capable of feeling. "We can get out of here." Ryan's eyes were wide. He was so pretty when he stopped worrying. He was so pretty even when he was worrying. "I'll take off work, you can too, we can go. Out of here. To a place I know." Ryan nodded. "Soon, alright? As soon as I can. I'm going crazy too."

"Okay."

"Are you okay?" No, of course he wasn't. Brendon was trying to be honest and Brendon was trying to be the mature one, he always was, mature despite the shorts and the bracelets and the lack of a proper job but he cared, and he tried, and Ryan.

Ryan was standing in front of Brendon and Ryan felt small. So small. Brown hair, brown eyes, white skin, no birthmarks, no scars, nothing there. Absolutely nothing. Or getting there. Falling apart and going crazy weren't the same thing but Ryan just wanted to say how not okay he was and get somewhere with that but all he could choke out was-

"Yeah. I'll be fine."

5/1 - Falling Apart (I'm Going Crazy)

Falling apart and going crazy are essentially the same thing. Washington State is all forests so why don't we go to a forest instead of not a forest because apparently Washington State is not all forests because we don't live in a forest but we do live in Washington State. Let's go to a forest. I'm going crazy.

I'm falling apart. Hold on and hold on and wait and we'll make it. I'm sick of waiting. Citizen. Bring me back to life and bring me somewhere new. Play me The Killers, no Joy Division, no coffee and nothing artificial that isn't love. No artificial love.

Dry air and your eyes in mine and no mirrors to show us ourselves because why be happy when you can be in love? I can do what I want until I can't but I'll kiss [you] if I want to and be near [you] if I want and now it's not a want, really, it's a need.

If you want to cry you should cry, and if you want to live you should live. You don't have to love me. You already did.

Ryan in Ryan's car and Brendon driving Ryan's car and trees and green and skies that were clouded with blue and grey and peace. Ryan wasn't patient, he never had been, but it wasn't like he could ever do anything about things he had to wait for. Waiting to turn eighteen hadn't been fun but he didn't know how to speed up time, yet, so he had just stuck it out until then.

And he had wanted to go out to the forest with Brendon as soon as the idea had been introduced but Ryan hadn't found or invented a real life TARDIS so instead he just made his way through life with a little more hope in his heart.

"Do I remind you of anything?" Ryan asked Brendon, his feet up on the dashboard of his car and his elbow on the bridge of the window. It wasn't cold outside but it wasn't warm either; there was just a chill sort of breeze in the air that teased with Ryan's hair and made Brendon's bracelets wave in the wind.

"You know what?" Brendon said, stopping to blow a bubble. "The Front Bottoms." Ryan looked over at him.

"What?"

"They're a band. They're on my phone, play some songs." So Ryan did and half nodded along to what he heard. He was open when it came to music that he hadn't heard, and listened to the lyrics playing through the speakers.

"Why do I remind you of them?" Brendon shook his head.

"You just... do. I guess you don't get it when it's about you." Ryan tisked and bopped his head back and forth to the music.

"I've never seen too much of this state." Ryan said, focused back on outside world and less on the music.

"Me neither." Ryan took a deep breath of the cool, tree tinted air blowing around his face.

"Where were you before this?" Brendon asked. Finally, learning more about each other.

"Nevada." Brendon smiled all big, the way that Ryan liked the best.

"I'm from Utah! I thought I'd never miss it..." Ryan sighed. He missed Nevada. Not what had been there for him, not the missed opportunities, and never the loneliness, just everything else. Ryan had felt like he glowed in the otherwise dry and dusty world that had surrounded him. Nothing had been there to reflect him and that's why he had escaped to Seattle, where there were actual opportunities for him.

"Dry Utah?" Ryan asked, knowing the answer.

"You know it. Specifically mormon Utah. I don't miss that." Brendon pulled off at an exit to a back road that was framed by trees.

"Man, I can't for the life of me understand the point of religion, but more specifically, that one. Like, just... why?" Ryan asked, hoping that he wasn't coming off as offensive in any form.

"I don't get it either, believe me. My parents kept telling me about God and Jesus and what I could and couldn't do and I just- I didn't believe any of it! I still don't. Religion is weird."

"Religion sucks," Ryan muttered angstily.

"What, you're not, like, Buddhist or something?" Brendon asked, turning onto a dirt road. The guitar in whatever song they were listening to surprised Ryan because he liked it. Ryan had no idea where they were; they could have been in Oregon or Idaho or even snuck into Canada and he wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. What had ever happened to paying attention to his surroundings? That was the point of writing- seeing something and then writing about it. Now he wasn't in touch with what was going on outside of his worthless internal problems or what was even going on involving his worthless internal problems.

"Nah. I'm not flexible enough for yoga." Brendon shot Ryan this sideways grin that made Ryan feel all fuzzy inside. Looking back at the trees outside that Brendon was doing a great job of maneuvering and not crashing into. "Do you ever want to apologize to the trees? I want to thank them for the air that they give me." Brendon seemed to find a perfect parking space on what looked like a previously cleared space of earth. When the car finally stopped, it made a horrible noise that made Ryan giggle and Brendon look terrified.

"Maybe you should apologize to the car." Ryan got out and slammed the door. The car let out a sound like a gunshot. Brendon had this sort of confused smile on his face, and took a good look at Ryan's car. "I hope you didn't kill it."

"Maybe jail would be good for me." Ryan started wandering off in a random direction and Brendon laughed, sort of.

"Follow me." They walked together in silence for a while and Ryan didn't mind it at all because he never had anything of worth to say that didn't embarrass him. The trees stretching over his head seemed so ominous but hopeful at the same time. Knowing that at least these ones were around to keep him alive and breathing, even if he didn't want to be at points, was reassuring.

"Thank you!" Screamed Ryan, making Brendon jump. "Trees!" He put in, seeing the confused expression on Brendon's face mold into a smile. "For the air I breathe!" Somewhere inside him, he wished that there was an echo and his voice carried like the way unimaginative authors took to describing in books that were dreadfully unrealistic, but the trees soaked up his words. Made them flat.

Well, at least they were heard.

Brendon looked like a miracle among the trees, his dark hair making his skin look more pale, eyes wide, lips pursed. Handsome.

"I'm sure they say you're welcome." They kept walking. It didn't take long until they reached where Brendon had been set on going; a lake sat in the middle of a ring of trees. There was a dock and some picnic tables off to the side of it and a very shitty looking gravel driveway down by the side of it. Completely empty, thank god.

The trees were reflected perfectly in the clear water, and Ryan felt himself properly breathe when he saw the view. Brendon crossed his arms over his chest with this proud expression on it, as though he had created the body of water himself.

"'S nice." Ryan said, oddly aware of every breath he was taking. Brendon nodded again. There was a sudden sort of solemnness in his eyes that Ryan didn't understand. Paying close attention showed him the way Brendon swallowed hard, like he was choked up about something. Brendon broke his eyes off of the lake and moved them to Ryan's.

"I've got a lot of memories. Tied back to here." It was enough of an explanation, and Brendon broke out of his daze to hunt around in his pockets for something or other. "Just, nostalgia. Want to play cards?" He asked, pulling himself out of whatever sort of slump that had overtaken him. So they played. On the picnic tables eating Ritz crackers until the sun set and became something that made Ryan stop their game to look.

Everything was so peaceful out where they were, the only sounds being the wind brushing through the trees and the chirps of birds calling to each other. Sometimes something would fall into the water, blurring ripples and soft splashes into the otherwise clear surface.

The sky was purple in the middle and orange and pink near the horizon. The trees that bordered the lake just barely scraped at the sky, and Ryan readjusted himself on the picnic to watch the colors reflect in the water. There had never been enough color in Nevada. Never enough in Washington, either.

Ryan came to realize that the silence felt so unnatural because Brendon wasn't chewing his gum. When the sunset finally blended into a mess of dark blue that wasn't exactly what Ryan was looking for, he turned himself back around to look at something more visually appealing.

Something that's jaw wasn't working and chewing at the gum like it usually was. Brendon's face looked so slack while glancing out at the lake, lost in another sort of daydream, and he turned his face back to Ryan. Eye contact.

"Do you want to swim?" Ryan turned bright red, thank god it was dark out, and shrugged. "Well, I do." Brendon pulled their cards together and put them back into the duct-taped little box that they had come in.

"I would..." Ryan said, making it sound all cryptic. Brendon looked down at him from his stance on top of the bench of the picnic table. "If I knew how to swim." Brendon snorted, but then seemed to realize that Ryan was being serious.

"You don't know how to swim?" Ryan shrugged.

"It's just never presented itself as a skill I need in life." Brendon jumped off of the table and stretched. His back cracked and his body was so nice and then his shirt was gone, pulled off his head, hair tousled; Ryan's mouth had gone dry.

"I'm going swimming."


	13. Kill The Messenger

"This is like..." Ryan waved his arms around and kicked his legs a bit while Brendon floated somewhere near him, arms outstretched like a starfish. "A sensory deprivation tank."

"Like in Stranger Things?" Asked Brendon. His voice sounded distant, but Ryan wasn't going to risk himself by sitting up to see where Brendon had gone. Sitting up. In water.

"Stranger Things?" Brendon was quiet until he realized that Ryan was being clueless again.

"It's this TV show, it's really cool. You've really missed a lot." That hurt Ryan in unimaginable ways but was met by simple silence from him. It wasn't just the unsophisticated energy that made Brendon seem so young, it was also the naivety. Sometimes, his words didn't seem to connect with his brain and he said anything that came to his mind. And Ryan lay under the glossy moonlight in the clear lake water and considered everything that he may have missed in the time that he tuned out from the world.

"I like Grey's Anatomy." He said in this quiet voice that seemed a little otherworldly and trailed off into nowhere land.

"You're sick." Brendon's voice seemed to be getting farther and farther away. The moon wasn't full but it was shining bright; Ryan had forgotten the essential information that included all of the phases of the moon, and he wondered about life up there. About life in the giant pine trees that had been living for longer than he could ever dream of, stretching around the lake and giving it protection. The light of the moon shone down onto the lake and made the water sparkle like there was a certain type of magic that the night brought that the sun just couldn't-couldn't manage.

It was like that time where Jon had been sick and Ryan had stayed over to make cup after cup of ramen and watched everything they could find on Netflix and they had binge watched My Little Pony and the night princess horse, whatever, had been locked away because all the ponies liked the sun better and all fell asleep at night so the night pony came back to bring eternal night and everyone was terrified but, why? Why had they been so scared of the nighttime?

Maybe it was the dark, and the way that it housed the unknown. No one liked the unknown. Not even Ryan, sometimes. Of course, he was curious and of course, there was more he wanted to experience and more he wanted to know that he didn't but still. The nighttime was beautiful. It didn't matter if it was raining at night, because there was no option for sunshine.

Sunshine was overrated.

It was a miracle that the sun shone at night. It was a miracle that anything that happened actually happened. That human bodies existed, that space was a real thing, that human bodies had been in space. Existential, suddenly, and Ryan was gasping for breath, thrashing around in the cold water; terrified.

He didn't know how to swim. The unknown.

"Ryan?" Brendon's voice was as solid as ever again and Ryan made a terrible choking noise somewhere in his throat that brought Brendon's body over to him, warm and familiar in the pool of unknown beneath Ryan. Kicking and fighting an unknown enemy, Ryan tasted brackish lake water in his mouth and spat. "Ryan, fuck-" Brendon was there, his face in the moonlight, he seemed to stop time. Ryan felt his body go slack and Brendon caught him there, holding his body up. "Hold onto me," he said, and Ryan could have never complained about an instruction like that. Arms wrapped around Brendon's back, Ryan tucked his face into his shoulder. Brendon pedaled water while Ryan breathed. There was just the sound of water again.

Brendon swung Ryan around so they were face to face and watched him there; eyes closed and hair soaked and skin dotted with silver drops of moonlight dyed water.

Ryan opened his eyes again and his lips sort of seemed to open like he was going to talk except, no, he wasn't. This was something new. A new sort of confidence and relaxation after he had almost fucking drowned, what the hell, now a sly smile. Brendon knew enough of this. And he wasn't complaining.

Ryan pulled himself up using Brendon's hands and put those fresh lips of his onto Brendon's like he had it all planned out and a confused Brendon kissed back because that's just about what he knew to do and, just like before, Ryan smiled against his lips with his eyes shut tight as though he was pretending the man in front of him was someone who would have willingly kissed him that same way six months ago.

Except he wasn't.

Except Brendon tasted different. Except Brendon kissed different.

Except Brendon wasn't William.

And Ryan shouldn't have been kissing anyone but William fucking Beckett but in that moment when he pulled away for a breath of air, all he saw was the prettiest fucking guy and his name didn't matter, not really, his ties didn't matter, he mattered. The smile on his face mattered. The water drops on his skin mattered. The way his lips looked in that light mattered.

Ryan stopped caring. Kissed him again. Except.

The shore felt a lot safer than the water but Ryan didn't mind where he was at this point, because he was with Brendon and there were hands and lips and skin and it was all fucking glorious and brilliant and, really, Ryan was enjoying himself more than he would have liked to let on.

Except he wasn't shy in letting Brendon know. It was dark, nearly pitch black, but Ryan felt as though he could see more clearly than ever because Brendon's body was hot, fuck, he was toned with muscles under his ribs instead of Ryan's scrawny excuse for a skeleton. Still, disappearing was so much easier when there was less of you altogether. And in that moment where it was wet from the lake and hot from the kisses and everything from everything because everything was everything. Everything.

Everything was amazing.

The next morning definitely wasn't not amazing. The vibe had lifted and Ryan found himself asleep on a picnic table sort of curled up in Brendon Urie's arms and there was absolutely nothing to complain about except maybe that it was kind of cold, but again, he was laying in Brendon's arms which ended up feeling a nice sort of warm.

All in all, it was, really, very, gay.

Ryan had always had problems with being the first person in line, the first person to speak up, the first person awake. Being the "first" of anything seemed to be an honor reserved for anyone other than himself, and this morning he was wishing more than anything that Brendon would have woken up first. He wasn't exactly sure why, but maybe he would have felt a little less sentimental about waking up next to him.

It didn't take long for Ryan to wake him up though, because removing someone's arms from around you is usually a good way to let them know that you don't want them there except Ryan was bad at letting people know what he wanted and what he wanted was Brendon and what he had gotten was Brendon but now it was light again and Brendon was laying next to him on the fucking picnic table and it was life. As life is.

And Brendon turned with his face scrunched up a bit against the pale sunshine that filtered into the earth and made everything much lighter. Brendon's skin seemed more pale than usual against his dark hair, and his equally dark eyes, now open, added to the dramatic look of it all.

"Hi." Ryan said. He was sat cross legged a decent amount of space away from Brendon. Brendon sat up and Ryan didn't want him to because he looked so peaceful and wonderful asleep but that wasn't exactly the best argument because he looked so animated and lovely when he was awake so either way, Ryan was winning.

"Were you watching me sleep?" Brendon asked, pulling his t-shirt away from his body and sitting up straight. Ryan made these dumb eyes at him that said "yes I totally was" but didn't answer out loud because god knew that both of them would take any chance to not-so-creepily watch each other sleep.

"Maybe." So he did end up answering. Brendon didn't seem to have any problem with it, through, and stretched in this appealing way, sort of like a cat, that made his spine and neck crack that also sent shivers crawling around Ryan's skin but he didn't mind because it was Brendon and man, he was getting a little too into Brendon. It was colder that morning, with a misty fog draping the sky above the lake and a soft greyish blue sky stretching above them. Brendon laid his legs in front of him and leaned back on his elbows, staring at the sky.

Ryan felt awkward, a bit, as though the words he would end up speaking were just hanging in the atmosphere; weird and unwanted and about to drop down onto both of them and not do what he wanted them to but he ended up with:

"How long are we staying here?" Like he wasn't in charge of his life or his car (or was it Brendon's) and couldn't leave anytime he wanted. He didn't even have a driver's license.

"However long you want," Brendon answered casually.

"Then I say we leave." At least Ryan wasn't dumb and indecisive and dragged things that hardly mattered on for too long. Mature in the sense that he knew how to get things over with. And it wasn't like he didn't like the lake and the trees and the sky and the way everything felt, he did, he just felt as though if he experienced too much of it for too long; he would never want to let go.

Letting go was a very important thing to know how to do.

Brendon gave Ryan this sly side glance that totally didn't trace anything back to the previous night and said.

"Do you have something planned?"

"Nothing in particular." They ended up back in Ryan's car, listening to a band called Modern Baseball that sounded appealingly like The Front Bottoms but not quite the same. Still, Ryan would settle for Joy Division.

The trees seemed oddly appealing that day and were reflected against the sky, the same sky where the grey had melted away and left this pale blue behind. Ryan watched Brendon against the sky from his lazy position in the passenger seat and wondered how different his life would be if he had gone down the route of photography instead of valuing words more than physical photos.

Ryan was about to say something dumb like "you're pretty" or something to Brendon but he thought that over before he spoke, for once, and decided against it. There was a sort of fear in him that last night he had been too eager, too pushy, too kissy and touchy and there hadn't been enough common sense and solemness, not that romance ever called for it, but Ryan was very confused and not at all sure if he had done anything right.

And they weren't fucking talking about it.

"You know what's fascinating?" Ryan asked.

"Hm?" Brendon replied, eyes steady on the road.

"Money laundering." It wasn't what Ryan had really wanted to say but it just came out and that was him, there, stuck in a conversation about money laundering.

"How so?" Thank god he was a writer because he knew how to bullshit like no one else in the world.

"You know, just the way that people are able to slip their illegal money into businesses and have it come out being a totally legal thing. It's like those times tables from middle school! You put something in, and something out comes out, but how? It's so interesting. And especially that a lot of people don't even notice what's happening. Like these banks in Switzerland or some random Carribean island. People can be so clueless about what's happening right in front of their face. People say it's illegal but hardly anyone gets caught for it! Isn't that weird? It can be so obvious and no one even knows! What's even more weird is that if you do get arrested for it, you've laundered so much money that there's completely enough to bail yourself out." Ryan's ramble turned out not to be completely a ramble, though there was absolutely no point to it, and Brendon made this funny looking amused face as they crossed into a small town that looked like it was a perfect product for grunge musicians and serial killers.

"Is there something you'd like to tell me?" Brendon asked, and Ryan burst out laughing. Brendon broke into a proper smile, all teeth and lip, and Ryan sobered himself up right away when he realized that they were getting, weird again.

Maybe it was time to pull out his emotionless side again. Brendon shook his hair back and finally looked over at Ryan. There was something in those warm eyes of him that pulled Ryan in way too close and made him feel like, on fire, and also melting while on fire at the same time which was totally possible with marshmallows so, perpetually, Ryan was a marshmallow.

And Brendon Urie had to be a kind of fire.

And Ryan Ross had always liked fire.

"So-"

"Can we go to the grocery store?" Ryan interrupted Brendon, partly because he didn't want the conversation to go the way it seemed to be going, and partly because he was really damn hungry.

"Sure." Brendon turned the car without any ice problems and pulled into the parking lot of a grocery store that looked like it could fit everyone in the town inside of it with some leftover room. Ryan didn't understand small towns and their obsessions with grocery stores. Brendon turned the car off and looked over at Ryan as if expecting to have one of those deep, let's-not-get-out-of-the-car conversations, but Ryan nearly fell out of the low door on his way out, and slammed the door in Brendon's face.

Not even waiting for Brendon, Ryan started making his way into the grocery store. Brendon followed him, almost running to keep up with him, and was wearing this expression of mostly confusion but, somehow, hurt.

"Yogurt, you know?" Ryan said, and Brendon, for once, didn't reply. "Yogurt." Ryan said to himself and set off towards the refrigerated aisle. Brendon trailed behind him, hands in his pockets. If he was going to be petty and quiet, Ryan wouldn't blame him. It was all his own decision. "The stuff with, like, the m&ms on top that you can drop in. I ate those every day after school in, like, elementary school. I haven't had them in so long." They reached the aisle with milk and eggs and butter and, consequently, yogurt. Ryan stared at the selection like he was having a face off until he exclaimed- "Oh! GoGurt! That shit is delicious! I crashed this gay fucking softball game last year and there was this cooler and inside of it there was this GoGurt and I took one because it had Spongebob on the front because who can resist Spongebob and some kid came up to me and told me it was his which sucked and was also kind of embarrassing..." As Ryan rambled, Brendon rolled his eyes.

"Are we ever going to address what happened or are you going to keep acting like this?" Ryan turned around with a box of yogurts in his hand. They were labeled "Yocrunch" and it would have made Brendon smile except he was frustrated and had been under the impression that Ryan was gay, and not a closet case who would deny anything that had taken place that could be incoherently sexual in the homo sense of it all.

"Huh?" Ryan said, stupidly, heart sinking in his chest.

"Did you lose your fucking memory?" Brendon asked, surprised that he had just cursed at Ryan, who looked, honestly, a little too nervous for the conversation.

"No-I. Listen."

"No, no. You fucking sucked my dick last night." Ryan gave the first perfectly unnatural natural smile that Brendon had ever seen, and raised his eyebrows. Brendon wasn't making a point to keep his voice low. "And then I..." Brendon trailed, waiting for Ryan to cut him off.

"No, go on. Tell me in detail everything that you did last night." Ryan looked so teasing when he gave that smile and did that winky thing with his eyes and twisted the ends of his too long hair like he was trying to flirt. Brendon knew he had used up his time when he started blushing, and Ryan grinned.

"Let's focus on buying the yogurt."

They ended up wandering around the town eating yogurt with sample spoons from an ice cream place that they had loitered in for too long. It turned out not to be the worst place that either of them had ever spent time in, there was a college nearby which prompted the existence of some decent shops, and as Ryan finished his third cup of yogurt, he stopped and stared across the street. Brendon followed his eyes to a tattoo parlor.

"I want a tattoo." Brendon raised his eyebrows.

"Have you ever gotten one?" Ryan drew his eyes from the shop to Brendon's, and winked. "You have one?" Ryan pulled back his hair from around the right side of his face and turned his head to show Brendon the area behind his ear where there was a little design of what looked like a pen snapped in half.

"I know, I'm a badass." Brendon snorted. Ryan let his hair drop down and nodded at Brendon to follow him as he walked across the street.

"You have the funds for this?" Brendon asked, not really joking.

"Can't be that much," Ryan replied, and opened the door to the shop. It only took a few minutes for everything to get exchanged and Ryan to end up lying shirtless on what looked a lot like a dentist's chair while Brendon stood around and giggled. Ryan had made him promise not to listen to what he was getting done while he told the tattoo artist, and he had kept the promise. Except now he was even more curious about what was happening. Ryan lay back and Brendon watched in shock as he showed what looked like no emotion as a needle went into his skin at a rapid pace over and over again.

It didn't take long for the whole ordeal to be over, and Ryan stood up with his back to Brendon. Having not been able to see what had been inked into Ryan's skin, Brendon danced around him until he could hold his shoulders in place and see what had been done to Ryan.

Right under his collarbone. 'Thank you for the air I breathe.' Ryan was beaming at Brendon, who looked up at him with these vulnerable sort of eyes.

"'S nice."

"Sure is!" Ryan exclaimed, sounding the most emotional that Brendon had ever heard him. In fact, Ryan was sort of reconsidering his entire life because if Brendon turned out to be another William then he was existentially fucked for getting this in his skin forever but, whatever, he could successfully kill himself this time if it happened the same way again. Ryan paid with his plentiful funds and the pair made their way back to Ryan's car, Ryan with a bounce in his step and Brendon with a pitiful sort of semi permanent blush worked onto his face.

In the car, they listened to a band called Sorority Noise. Ryan found himself liking The Front Bottoms more than any of the other bands. When the Seattle skyline came into view, Brendon's phone started ringing. He ignored it until it didn't stop and then he asked Ryan to check who it was from.

"Shit! Fuck!" Brendon checked the clock on the car and wildly pulled across two lanes of highway to the shoulder. Still holding Brendon's wildly ringing phone, Ryan stared in apparent shock because from what he had seen, Brendon never acted this way. Once the car was messily parked by the side of the road, Brendon swiped at the phone until it finally picked up the call. Ryan curled back into his seat and watched as Brendon got out of the car to take the call.

As if the doors would block it out.

"Hey, yeah- yeah, I-" His voice got cut off and Ryan watched him pace around, tugging at his hair and picking at the skin on his forehead. "I told Matt..." Brendon's face sort of contorted when something else came through the line, and Ryan watched as his lips pouted and his eyebrows pulled together. Bad news. Something was wrong. "But Matt-" Whoever was on the line was clearly not letting him speak. "I know that I should have taken responsibility but it was a sudden thing and I was sure that I had the hours off, I'll be back by at least four today, I can work extra hours tonight-" Something final was said and Brendon stopped his nervous pacing and frantic talking. Quiet quiet quiet.

"Okay." "Okay." "Thank you." Hung up.


	14. Stationary

Brendon was sitting in the kitchen on the counter drinking well made coffee in his pajamas when Ryan made his way downstairs in the morning. Usually, Brendon would be out of the house and at work or on his way to work but by the way that there was no computer open on his lap and he was lethargically stirring the coffee while looking very physically dead Ryan inferred that something was different today.

"What's up?" Ryan asked, watching Brendon heave a loud sigh. Everything felt flip flopped and opposite right then, with Brendon being all mopey and emo while Ryan seemed alright in the head and able to ask the questions about what was wrong.

And it was all about that phone call, the phone call that both of them were overly aware of, the phone call that made Brendon's jaw hurt because he had been stress chewing gum all night, the phone call that made Ryan nauseous because of the emergency coffee pot that was being put to good use right there and then: the phone call that had changed everything.

Or simply cost Brendon one of his jobs.

"I messed up. And I think I lost my good good job." Which was a little less than specific and Ryan didn't know where to be, at all, really, though it was his own kitchen. When Brendon sat on the counter, which was always, he put his shoulders up straight and stretched his legs out and threw up his chin in that oh so elegant and defiantly fucking hot way but now that Brendon seemed unsure, or careless, about who he was or what he looked like, Ryan felt insecure too. Maybe insecure about being a writer because jesus-

"What kind of writer am I if the smell of coffee makes me want to throw up?" He asked out of nowhere, perplexed at how Brendon had been throwing back mug after mug of it.

"If the taste doesn't, then you're okay." And Ryan had made it all about him again, like always, even if it was just about stupid coffee and being a stupid writer because he was flaunting the profession that he did have around in front of someone who had just lost their job and-

"I'm going to go." The only thing he was even good at saying. Expecting raised eyebrows or some sort of smile, Ryan didn't know, Brendon just didn't look anything. And Ryan made his way towards the door and it felt like a slow motion melodrama in which Brendon would turn around and shout something in Spanish and he and Ryan would end up making out while cameras spun around them to make it look like they were the sun in the middle of a swirling Milky Way.

Instead-

"Can I come with you?" In a tiny voice, it was his cry for help. Sitting back on the counter like he had forgotten how to sit, the colors in his bracelets seemed faded and dull, but his eyes.

His eyes always spoke.

"Yeah." An 'of course' would have been better but Ryan took what he could get and having Brendon with him was as good as it ever got and suddenly he was thinking the bad thoughts that were a little too rash and a little too fucking gay about someone that he shouldn't have but the look that was now on Brendon's face was desperate, that's what it was, and Ryan had always presented him with an affirmative answer.

Brendon left his coffee mug on the counter without cleaning it up, first thing wrong, and followed Ryan to the door still in his pajamas, second thing wrong because he didn't lead out the door, and walked next to Ryan in silence with no gum chewing or bracelet twisting- third thing wrong.

Everything was wrong.

Brendon walked with his eyes roaming the sidewalk and his feet dragging. There were no questions asked as they got on the bus and Ryan, who was usually all too welcoming of silence, felt uncomfortable with the way everything felt.

Brendon was not Brendon, closed Brendon, an alien in that imposter skin and Ryan was not Ryan, Ryan was pretending to be old Ryan, a Ryan who cared, a Ryan who wanted to lure the spaceman out of Brendon's body which was so under attack. But closed Brendon was bad Brendon and old Ryan had been subject to change so they were silent apart until a dog was hooked up to a leash and a drizzle had started.

"Tell me a secret," Ryan said casually, watching the dog prance in the small forming streams of water bordering the curb of the road.

"I cheated on my science final my freshman year of high school." It was an immediate answer and Brendon's face wasn't showing any expression.

"Tell me one." He said without a hesitation.

"I used to write suicide notes every single day until my boyfriend found them." Ryan kept his eyes on the dog in front of him. It felt like he didn't have to explain that one to Brendon like he had to William. It would be easier to stop denying it. Ryan hadn't been suicidal, he had just been in love.

"I crashed my mom's car my junior year just because I was mad at her." It seemed that all of Brendon's secrets came from high school. Ryan had plenty from that time in his life.

"Once in my junior year I got blackout drunk just to see how it felt. To see if it gave me any identity." It didn't even sound so bad coming out of his mouth but it hurt his chest because it had been horrible. It had been so horrible. And after it, after realizing that growing up to be a worthless asshole like his father was not how he wanted his future to work out, Jon had realized that something was wrong. And not in the way that Ryan needed help, in the way that Ryan wouldn't accept any help.

Not helpless, just hopeless.

"I used to be homeless." Long, long silence. The rain was getting harder and harder and they had moved off of the concrete sidewalk into a cluster of trees that seemed to develop into a forest. At last, Ryan met Brendon's eyes. Ryan had been right the entire damn time.

"In Seattle?" Brendon nodded and pulled at one of his bracelets, finally, and Ryan realized that this was all real life. Brendon was as far to go to say as insecure about it, and avoided Ryan's eyes. "Why in fucking Seattle? Vegas is a much nicer place to be homeless." Brendon looked back up at Ryan like he didn't understand what he had just said. Maybe it had been offensive. Ryan didn't know. Their pace had stalled and slowed until they had stopped altogether and the dog was looking up at both of them until Brendon burst out laughing.

Ryan didn't even have to think about what was funny before he started laughing too and Brendon and Ryan apart had turned right back into Brendon and Ryan together, smiling and feeling crazy and feeling fucking good. The dog Ryan was supposed to be walking just looked confused as Brendon pressed the backs of his palms to his eyes and laughed that fantastic laugh of his until both of them finally got their breath back.

"Why didn't I choose to be homeless in Vegas?" Brendon asked, his voice only the tiniest bit hysterical. Ignoring him, a smile struggling to be hidden on his face, Ryan continued on their path through the forest. But then it slowly got quiet again and all that was left was the rain that neither of them would ever complain about and Ryan wanted more explanations and Brendon knew he did. "I sort of got kicked out of my house." Brendon started, obviously not bothering with all of the details because "sort of" didn't come close to describing every little piece of the chaotic puzzle that had lead up to him "leaving," and still, Brendon was sure that if his parents were asked, they would still maintain the story that their son had gone to Seattle by his own accord.

"Huh." Ryan said, because it had gotten quiet again. They had wandered deeper into the forest where the ground was soft and the air smelled like stale sunshine. The air felt thick around them, and a soft mist coated the ground. The green of the world seemed sort of ghostly, and Ryan felt as though he could actually breathe for once.

"It was that I had to leave. Like, I could stay at home and be miserable or I could go." Brendon continued.

"And you went."

"I did." Little pieces of mulch crunched under their feet. "And everything fell through when I got here. I had nothing." Ryan was about to add something all cryptic and too writer-y like- "so you became nothing!" But it would have been too dumb and cliche so he kept his stupid mouth shut and avoided Brendon's eyes. "And so I was living on the streets. No way back to Vegas to be homeless somewhere warmer."

"I'm sorry." Brendon was about to reply with something all snotty and too juvenile like- "I don't need your pity!" But it would have been quite unnecessary and ridiculous so he kept his mouth shut and met Ryan's eyes. Maybe, after all, he did have something to say.

"What's your biggest, darkest secret?" Brendon asked, feeling like a middle schooler talking with his friends at one in the morning over a flashlight, feeling like he was the coolest kid on earth. Ryan paused, as if thinking. A fake expression and a fake, yes, Ryan was fake in that moment because when anyone is asked that question, something immediately comes to their mind. Always. And Ryan knew his deepest secret and Brendon knew his, although it did have to do with the homeless part of things, and they were quiet. Together or apart? Brendon couldn't figure it out.

Together. Because Ryan spoke.

"I'm in love with someone." While on his way to coming up with those five words, the idea "my William" had crossed Ryan's mind in little fragments that had put themselves together and made him feel quite sick because he had never liked being called someone else's, like when people always said that their partner was "theirs," like, okay, you're taken, but you don't own somebody. My William. It was horrible, plain horrible, and horrible made Ryan feel sick and Brendon was pretending not to be interested but he was letting way too much of everything show, this faux apathy that had way too much genuine curiosity behind it.

"Yeah?" Brendon asked.

"Mhm." Ryan said. And that was as far as they got.

As far else as they managed to get was home and Ryan trapped himself writing inside while Brendon went out to see if his job was salvageable, it wasn't, and if he was able to find a somewhat suitable replacement for it, which he was.

But it was the stupid necessity to walk back by the park which made him feel worse and worse so he did, thinking that nothing would come of it.

The sky had those light clouds in it that were so thin that the sun shone through anyways but it didn't really matter too much and it was mundane weather and Brendon felt sick to his skin because he was going out of his way to do something that he didn't have to just because he wanted to and he was like an addict going back to the substance when all he needed was to fucking check into rehab.

Well, he didn't go to the park right away. Or the sketchy bookstore that Sarah had obviously made her mark on. He spent too much time pacing circles around the building while resisting the urge to rip all his hair out or maybe just go home and pet Bogart until he forgot about everything he was worried about but none of that would work and going inside the building wasn't going to work either because, well, because it was like a fucking breakup.

It wasn't supposed to happen over the phone. An asshole move, admittedly something that Brendon had done in like ninth grade while someone had been tuning in over Party Line and had laughed and hung up when the girl on the other line (but not really) started crying. While growing up in the '90s had maybe sucked a little bit, Brendon was now stuck with the absolute suckiness of having to go into his building to pick up his last paycheck and maybe be a tiny bit desperate enough to ask if there was any way for it to, like, not be his last paycheck.

God damn.

Inside of the building felt different than it used to because now the marble was shockingly glossy and the air conditioning gave Brendon goosebumps and he felt rightfully intimidated by it as a stranger rather than annoyed by it as a worker. It was the best job he had ever had, best money he had ever made, and Brendon didn't even remember how he had ended up working in the bank but he felt his heart grow heavier and heavier as he approached the second set of doors that led into the familiar carpeted office space.

Gabe made the quickest ever eye contact with Brendon before he turned his head to the side and scratched at his hair. Brendon felt hot and cold at the same time and stared at Gabe but it didn't even matter because Gabe wouldn't look at him.

"Gabe." He couldn't be immature enough to flat out ignore him like this. Could he? Brendon twisted the toe of his worn shoe into the carpet as he watched Gabe intently, wanting a reply, needing a reply.

"Hey, Brendon." Gabe finally turned himself back around to hit Brendon with the most hopeless look on his face. This wasn't the Gabe that Brendon remembered and the one that Brendon remembered wasn't going to suddenly reappear so Brendon tried to keep it mature and, well, mature because that's what he had always tried to hard to be when everyone else couldn't keep their shit together. Like when Gabe couldn't get his shit together and Brendon had lent him some money, some money that, as a homeless person, Brendon couldn't afford to lose just to help him out a little bit and Gabe had gone and blown it and come back to Brendon for more and he had been mature then by not giving him any more.

And now Gabe wouldn't even speak to him.

"Is Pete around?" Brendon asked, trying to not let his anger show through in his voice.

"Always is." Gabe replied, watching Brendon's scuffed shoe twist into the carpet. That was it.

"Can I see him?" Everyone who worked there knew Pete's thing about not being disturbed unless it was necessary but Brendon didn't work there anymore so he felt that he was in purgatory and Gabe was God not letting him into heaven and Pete was Satan waiting down the hall about to give him a one way ticket to hell. Gabe shrugged, which gave Brendon the invitation he needed to slink down the hall and knock on Pete's door with as much bitterness as he could muster in a knock.

"Who?" Pete hadn't changed in the three days that Brendon had been away from him. That was just how he was, getting lost in his head and forgetting his words which was odd because he seemed surprisingly put together and eloquent on the phone when he had fired Brendon without a second thought. Brendon opened Pete's door without answering his question, the knock had just been a gentle warning, and tilted his head while giving Pete the cockiest face he could pull together. Pete's eyes widened when he saw Brendon, and opened his mouth like he was ready to explain himself.

"Are you serious?" Started Brendon, moving towards Pete's desk. "I know that Matt told you- it was not even half of a day! I have a house now, I have it all together now- and you take half a day?" Pete pushed himself farther towards the wall and away from Brendon in his rolling chair, chewing on his lip.

"You're not getting your job back, if that's what this is about." He said in this horribly undermining tone. Brendon frowned at him. Pete shook his head. "Those eyes don't work on me."

"Am I not getting my paycheck either?" Brendon demanded, wishing that there was any way for this to be easier. Pete just watched him.

"I can send it to you with more money on it, if you want." Pete always did that stupid sarcastic thing with his voice that made Brendon feel stupid, and Brendon couldn't help but draw up his face a bit. "I told you that you'd be paid through a week. I hope you didn't come here just looking for a fight."

"I just..."

"You're not getting your job back. And you can leave now. Without bothering Gabe. Some of us actually have work to do." Brendon stared at him, absolutely hopeless. There was a pause before Pete went "bye!" and Brendon stomped out of his office without shutting the door.

There.

Back down the hall where Gabe was watching him closely from over a desk and out into the real world where that damned park was practically begging for him to come back. And he did because he gave in too easily and there she was, like she always was, in the same place that he had left her.

She looked a little grittier than before, her hair was longer and more tangled, her skin was darkened with dirt, but she was still smiling with what looked like genuine happiness at people who walked by, calling them beautiful, telling them to have blessed days, and doing some off and on singing.

Brendon didn't know how long he had been watching her for until he started singing one of the songs that he had written. It sounded better when she sang it like that, all by herself with that smile on her face as she swayed back and forth and he wanted to go sit down next to her and hold her hand and sing along because those were his words but no one was taking any credit and someone had just dropped a bill into the empty carton sat out in front of her so he just watched and watched as his heart fell apart inside of his chest.

He had the audacity to tell Ryan that he had never been in love before.

Maybe Ryan made him feel all giddy and stupid but made him act refined and cool but there was no denying that he had been in love with Sarah. Or maybe he felt like he should have been in love. They were more like boy and girlfriend than brother and sister for the good parts and Brendon had convinced himself that he didn't need a home if he had Sarah but then she began disappearing and showing up smelling like other people. She would wear makeup and try to shave her legs and Brendon watched as she hollowed herself out to make room for all the people she had to let inside her. In both senses.

They had seemed more like strangers when Brendon had told her that he was moving in with someone and they had seemed more than strangers when he had left her for the last time. She had been high on heroin. He hadn't stopped her from shooting up.

Ryan's house felt more like a prison than a house, never a home, because Brendon was craving anything that felt like home so badly but Ryan always acted so strange around him and Brendon was ready to fall asleep on that mattress in the basement that was apparently his now but before he could do that, he saw Ryan's email open on his computer.

Snoopy, again.

Brendon wasn't exactly in the mood to snoop, more really in the mood to fall asleep and not wake up for a few months, but as he was about to close the email, something in the message caught his eye. There were enough moments of silence to fill up the basement before Brendon slammed the computer shut, temporarily forgetting that it was probably the most valuable thing he owned, and stormed upstairs, to Ryan's floor of the house.

This counted as an emergency.

He didn't even knock this time and just flung the door open. Ryan had been sitting on the floor in what looked like a pile of tobacco, holding an unrolled cigarette and a black ballpoint pen. Brendon didn't have the time or, frankly, the interest to care about what Ryan had been doing. Maybe he had gone to the bank just for a fight. It didn't matter then, because he hadn't gotten it. He was getting it right now.

"What the fuck are you doing trying to write something about me?" Brendon shouted, not exactly going into the clearest detail. That didn't matter either because the guilty as charged look on Ryan's face said everything Brendon needed to know.

"I don't-" Ryan said in a weak voice.

"You're making money off of writing about me." Brendon said, turning his shout into a deep and threatening tone. Ryan, still on the floor, looked up at him. "You're not even good enough to think up a fucking fictional character."

"I'm just writing about my life-" Again, Brendon cut him off.

"You're not writing about your life! My life isn't your life! It's my fucking life!" Brendon screamed, feeling completely out of control.

"But you're part of my life, you asshole!"

"It doesn't fucking matter!" Feeling less mature than he ever would have wanted, Brendon turned around and stormed out of Ryan's room, oddly similar to the way he had in Pete's office. Except this felt way, way worse. You're part of my life.


	15. Be Still

It was never going to stop raining. Not that Ryan had much of a problem with it but it made him feel quite useless to be sitting cross legged on his unmade bed, staring out the window at the relentless torrent. Without Dottie. Without anyone.

He wasn't going to sit there pitying himself because he had worked too hard on not being a childlike asshole but he didn't know what to do or how to fix it; it being absolutely everything.

And he sat, that same way, useless as ever, brown hair and brown eyes and pink lips and white skin but none of it really had to exist and it was so much harder to disappear when you had unapologetically ruined so much. God, so much.

Saying sorry was far too complicated. Ryan needn't waste his time. He felt the way he had in the days after William had broken it off. His world had sort of felt like a dream, with everything grey and soft and muted, like every object was just a cloud floating along in the sea of the sky and everyone was very busy but didn't exist all at once.

Ryan moved slowly across his bedroom, giving the door handle an odd look. Only three people had ever touched that handle from the inside. William and Ryan and Brendon but now two of the three of them had touched it in the wrong way, they had opened the door only to close it again on their way out. They had only opened it to close it right away.

Ryan was a poster child for hopelessness. It was obviously too late for William to come back and wipe his fingerprints from the handle and then Ryan's entire life, but it didn't have to be that way for Brendon. And it wasn't completely the end of the world but in Ryan's eyes nothing could ever be fixed ever again and there was no point to life and everything was an existential disaster and Earth was just Earth so it could be sucked into a black hole and undergo spaghettification and there could easily be six or eight days in a week or thirty hours in a day but there was no God and humans didn't control the earth, except they did, and, and-

Ryan opened his door.

None of his panic eased, though, and he peered around as if looking for Brendon to appear and make Ryan feel even more guilty, if that was possible. No one appeared. There was just Dottie, sat on the top of the staircase, staring Ryan down with a sad, disappointed look. It seemed she had just been waiting for him to show, because she promptly got up and moved down the stairs, as if giving Ryan a warning not to follow her.

Which he did, though not exactly, he eventually went downstairs because the guilt was eating away at him and the front door seemed real friendly so he ignored Dottie's wordless anger and disappeared outside.

Well, he wished that it was that easy to disappear. Maybe disappearing also involved walking downtown in the pouring rain to do a great deal of nothing because there was nothing in Ryan's mind that seemed fit to fix his problems. It was raining and it was raining hard. His skin was wet with droplets and his hair fell damp into his eyes. It was a damp sort of wet that soaked a little through to his soul (though it sounded a bit over exaggerated) and he would have so much rather felt soaked through and completely alive like he had in the lake with Brendon. He wanted to feel like he always felt with Brendon.

And all of a sudden, he was in love.

Maybe love wasn't smiles. Maybe love was standing alone in the middle of a street surrounded by other people in the pouring rain. Everyone was carrying an umbrella but Ryan and they all brushed by him, places to be, a busy Saturday on a busy street and it was Seattle so no one minded the rain but everyone's faces were half hidden by umbrellas except Ryan's and if anyone had taken the time to pull the umbrella out of their eyes and let the rain hit them for a second, they would see an expression of ultimate clarity on his face.

Ryan was in love.

He had known it before, a little, in a sort of deep and not in your face sort of way, just in passing moments. Yet at any point in his life after what had happened with William the last thing in the world that Ryan would ever want to be was in love and with William there had been no such revelation about the love, he had known it all along, but here, here he had been blocking out everything for so long that now, now. Now he was rightfully in love.

Love took him down a damp little alley shot through with storm drains and little floods of water that soaked through to the very bottom of his shoes. He had just seen "RECORDS" and an arrow painted in bright yellow on a dark grey cinderblocked wall and he had ducked out of the rain to be protected a little more by the high buildings on either side of him. The record store he found himself in was not bright yellow, in fact, it was more of a faded red mixed with a little grey. Ryan liked imagining things, stores, places, people, as colors sometimes just to think about what he could compare them to in his mind.

This record store could be a trashed newspaper in a trash can covered in ketchup or hot sauce or the red smeared topping of a thrown away food item on top of the crumpled newspaper.

It smelled musty in the store, and the walls were stacked to the ceiling with records. The floor was done in torn carpet and Ryan relaxed when he walked in. There seemed to be no clear form of organization at all throughout the store, which made Ryan feel even better. He liked chaos. William hadn't. William had cleaned his room for him, William had thrown out the clutter that had made Ryan feel so at home.

Everything had been burned after William had left and Ryan had felt so empty because his room had been empty and the house had been empty but Brendon had showed up and as the house had become more and more full, Ryan had began to feel more whole. It seemed stupid but Ryan ended up spending three hours in the dead silent record store, Ryan didn't notice that the odd silence wasn't filled by music as it usually was at record stores because the store was all about music, of course, before he found the Coldplay record that snapped him out of his daze.

Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. The one album that Ryan could remember by them. There was the new one about dreams and the one about ghosts and there was Parachutes, really, he could remember that one, and then there was Viva la Vida but he didn't know if there were any other albums by them and it shouldn't have mattered, obviously, because he didn't like Coldplay but.

Brendon did.

Ryan bought the record from a dead looking guy at the counter who talked about the variant of the vinyl for about twenty minutes before he abruptly shut up and let Ryan awkwardly creep out of the store. Back into the rain. It was never going to stop raining.

It rained in the grocery store too, thanks to Ryan's soaking wet canvas shoes that trekked around either wet dirt or dirty rain onto the floor of the grocery store. It wasn't as though the floors had been clean, they were far beyond dirty now that everyone's wet shoes had made their prints all over the floor, but Ryan brought the rain with him. Like that Blue Jays player who they called the "bringer of rain," or whatever.

Ryan had gone to Toronto for about three days on an odd little trip which had involved him sitting through a mind numbing baseball game where the only thing he noticed was how people brought signs for the players, something he hadn't seen at any other stadiums, and that there was a hotel inside of the baseball stadium. The writing "friends" he had gone with had been self proclaimed intellectuals so he had never quite understood why they ended up drinking shitty beer and watching a very shitty team play baseball in an otherwise frankly fantastic city. Canada was so much better than the United States. Maybe that's why Ryan had moved up to Seattle. It was as close as he could get to The Great White North without leaving his blessed country behind.

There weren't Targets in Canada, they had all been shut down for reasons that Ryan didn't care enough to know, but Ryan had ended up in an american Target, record tucked under his arm, on the hunt for gum. He had always considered Targets to be grocery stores because they sold everything that was sold in grocery stores, plus more things. This Target was particularly massive, and Ryan found himself wandering through crowded aisles filled with loud voices and squeaky shoes until he found the candy aisle, where a few teenagers were hanging around and marveling at the cheap prices of caramel. Ryan stopped walking and began scanning the types of gum. He knew that he was getting weird sideways looks from the kids, and their voices seemed to die as their eyes gave him sketchy sideways glances.

When he started smelling the gum packets, they began giving him even weirder looks. Ryan didn't know what he was doing to freak these kids out but he was sick of them staring at him as though there was something on his face so he dropped the gum packet in his hand that obviously wasn't Brendon's gum, turned, and stared down the group of teenagers.

"What do you people want?" He demanded. The kids all huddled closer together, laughing and whispering but they hadn't left, and one of them, a girl in a lavender raincoat, stepped forward.

"You're Ryan Ross, aren't you?" Ryan narrowed his eyes, surprised.

"What?" He asked. His heart was beating and his hands started feeling a bit shaky and all he wanted was gum but the lavender raincoat girl tilted her head and stared at Ryan with her clear blue eyes.

"Yeah, you're him. I thought you died." Ryan stared right back at her. He didn't know what he was waiting for and they seemed oddly casual for saying something like "I thought you died" but Ryan was just surprised that they knew him and that girl was still standing there with her eyebrows raised. "You know, your blog was pretty famous." Ryan was still silent, and just stared at the girl. She stepped back, hands held up a little bit.

"I'll leave you to it." They were all watching him and he sort of felt like his body was on fire and they disappeared around the corner with their cheap caramels and he couldn't exactly breathe because people knowing who he was felt horrible. Having a physical form was terrible and so was being recognized as someone, or something, other than a lazy piece of shit who often messed up and was hardly ever caught owning up to his mistakes.

Ryan stood in that candy aisle long enough for his head to go numb and when he started smelling gum packets again, he had forgotten how Brendon smelled. He couldn't be in love if he could forget how Brendon smelled that easily. Ryan picked up a purple Trident gum packet and when he smelled it, he was almost overwhelmed because he wasn't allowed to be numb anymore. Not even because of teenagers who got excited over cheap caramel who claimed that they knew who he was.

Ryan bought Brendon's gum.

Lots of it, really, and then had a clean fight with a self checkout machine and then left the store with as much dignity as he had when entering it. Outside, the air felt clear and clean and light and it felt easier to breathe, somehow. Although the heaviness of the rain had completely paralleled his mood and made him feel, in an odd sense, less alone, the very clear feeling of the world after a summer storm was comfortingly calm. Ryan watched his shoes walk down the paved street in front of him until the road turned to gravel, and watched as they came upon blue spray paint tastefully shaped into letters on the ground.

"YOU'RE NOT ALONE." Ryan stared at the words, only a little rashly upset that someone was trying to tell him that he was something he wasn't. But under those words, done in a purpley pink faded spray paint, were the words- "YES I AM!"

Ryan nearly laughed because it was very fucking relatable and Ryan was the yes I am to everyone else's you're not alone and he started laughing out loud for no reason except the reason right in front of him and he was honestly a petty piece of shit who had to get his head out of his ass and start being more mature. YES I AM! Bag of apologies in his arms, Ryan stepped clear over the words, still in a sort of giggly place because he was so fucking petty that it was sort of hilarious but also a little shocking with a little twist of sad but none of it mattered so much in the end because he was going to make things right.

And that was that.

Brendon, on the other hand, wasn't feeling so completely solid and confident about anything at all because Ryan was looking a lot like an immature kid who would never be able to stand on his own two feet, no matter what. Brendon couldn't believe that he had believed that Ryan would change.

There had been the constant threats of leaving on Wednesday and oh, Brendon so hadn't wanted to leave but he knew it was going to happen if it had to and it didn't have to and the basement had felt a little more and more like home except now he realized that though Ryan had gotten a proper job he had also kept up with his writing duties and-

You're a part of my life.

Asshole.

Brendon didn't like fighting and confrontation. He never had. It had been enough as a teenager to just leave home instead of fighting about leaving home. The easiest thing to do was just to do it. If he wanted to leave Ryan's twisted little life and find another house and find another life that wasn't nearly as chaotic as the one he was stuck in right now.

The problem was, he didn't want to leave.

He liked Ryan a lot, most of the time, but there was that other part of the time where he couldn't stand Ryan and he felt too angry and he fucking hated being angry. Anger altogether was an emotion that Brendon hated because he found it useless. People only usually got angry due to other people's hatred and if there were no violent emotions like that altogether, the world would be such a fantastic place. And Ryan would have obviously indulged in a conversation involving these topics with Brendon and they would have both talked like writers and realized in the backs of their minds that they loved each other but Brendon was having a hard time feeling anything other than what felt like necessary frustration at Ryan Ross.

Brendon crept back upstairs with his head down and Bogart at his feet. The wooden stairs leading up to Ryan's room looked oddly intimidating but Brendon climbed them anyways and spent far too long talking himself up in front of Ryan's door before knocking on it. This had to count as an emergency. No one answered.

"Ryan?" Brendon asked. There was no reply. Brendon knocked again. After barging in like he had earlier, now realizing loud and clear that he had been the one to start this fight and definitely not Ryan, Brendon didn't want to mess with Ryan again like that. If Ryan was sitting in his room and being an immature little bitch then Brendon was going to open that door but, still.

Anger. Not good.

He laid down on the floor and squinted under the crack in the door to see if he could see a darkened patch of light where Ryan's body might be but there was none. Brendon opened the door. Ryan wasn't even there.

It was all a load of fucking nonsense and Brendon didn't know whether to be offended or impressed or anything else because Ryan definitely wasn't there, he had run off somewhere and would probably kill himself or something and never come back and Brendon would not be stuck paying the utilities on the house of the dead guy who had also maybe sucked his dick before.

It wasn't exactly an ordinary situation. It wasn't ordinary for Brendon to be feeling lonely either because there was usually someone there for him but today, there wasn't. Bogart hadn't even followed him inside Ryan's room, as though Bogart was a demon and Ryan's room was a pentagram drawn up in salt. Brendon didn't mind, not really, and felt this odd heavy feeling in his chest descend and make him feel a little ill.

Lovesick.

He sat gently on Ryan's bed and breathed deep. Ryan smelled like cologne and toothpaste and trees, sort of. He smelled like a polished dark brown color. He smelled like that fancy coffee shop they had gone to. Well, his bed did. And Brendon couldn't exactly help himself but it made him feel better at least, and he might or might not have fallen asleep right in Ryan Ross's bed. The whole situation was just missing one key part.

Ryan Ross.


	16. Ever After

Waking up alone never felt good. Especially waking up alone in someone else's bed. Curled up in Ryan's blankets and pillows, Brendon had expected to roll over and see Ryan there, eyes low with a lazy smile on his face. Instead, Brendon was just met with a view of the world outside Ryan's window. It was raining. It was always raining. Brendon sat up, throat dry, and crawled out of Ryan's bed. Maybe Ryan wasn't going to come back home. Maybe Brendon had been right.

He stood next to the bed in Ryan's freezing room watching the cold rain pour down outside. In Seattle, it felt like it was never going to stop raining. Brendon had never expected himself to like the rain. After growing up in part of the world where it had hardly ever rained and when it did it brought on floods and a great deal of wet dirt and dust, he hadn't really expected much from a city and state where all it ever really did was rain.

It hadn't been pleasant in the winter where it rained despite the freezing temperatures and Brendon had found no way to get dry and it had been so cold but at least there had been other people with him. There had been Sarah with him. They had tried enough to keep each other happy, keep each other warm, keep each other alive. Ryan wasn't like that. Ryan wasn't going to keep Brendon alive.

So Brendon left Ryan's room and made his way back down the stairs feeling more than a little defeated and then saw the person he wanted to see so badly. Asleep on the couch. Brendon just stopped and stared and felt like he could do nothing else. Ryan could have come upstairs. Ryan could have at least kicked Brendon out of his bed but instead he took the couch and Brendon didn't know how to feel.

So he felt cold. He felt bad. And he went back down to his own room. Back in his own bed, it took about five seconds for Brendon to realize that he might, in fact, be in love. When he spent every second of every day thinking about Ryan and wondering what Ryan was doing and wanting to see Ryan and wanting Ryan to be happy, well. He had sort of convinced himself that he disliked Ryan to a point where he couldn't fucking stand him but right now all he wanted was Ryan, fucking, Ryan.

Why did Brendon care so much about him? Brendon sort of didn't want to love him and didn't want to think about him anymore because he was so damn complicated but maybe it was more fun that way, more interesting. Basic love wasn't love at all. Ryan was hard to like in the first place but Brendon missed him so much even though he was right upstairs, asleep on the couch. So Brendon lay back and stared at his ceiling and thought and thought and thought and while he was thinking Ryan was writing because Ryan hadn't exactly been asleep, he had just been waiting on Brendon to leave his room.

Ryan wasn't angry anymore. Or at least that was what he was trying to tell himself but he had makeshift apologies for Brendon and a typewriter because using Brendon's computer had been a long shot anyways and it was raining again but Ryan had never had a problem with rain. Or a problem with writing.

5/2 - Dreaming

With you, I dreamed of rain. Of cold, maybe. I'm not sure why, but maybe I needed something to counteract your warmth. Hiding up in my room with all the lights off and all of the windows open while thunderstorms raged outside was the only way that I could get by while you played your piano and sang your songs of sunshine because I wanted cold showers and giggles, not full on laughing and warm water. I wanted the same thing for dinner every night, paint easels littering the floors, writing tacked up to the wall, the piano out of tune and there for both of us to use. What I got was different things for dinner every night, a floor clean enough to see my own messy reflection in, nothing tacked up to the wall because no, you didn't have fucking OCD. That piano was kept in tune and I wasn't allowed to touch it because I was a mess.

I cried sometimes, I let myself fall apart in your arms and I was only ever reprimanded because "real men don't cry-" who ever said I was a real man? Gay men aren't real men, remember? I wear scarves to cover hickeys, not collared shirts. I don't shower for weeks on end, I smoke cigarettes, I don't own a hairbrush, I'm sorry you had to kiss stubble. I never liked the feeling of razors touching my skin.

With him, I dream of sun. Of warmth, maybe. I know why, because maybe I need something to counteract my cold. He takes cold showers and giggles when he gets out, he tells me that cold showers are the best. Cold showers do not kill boners. We make each other warm while we take cold showers. Warmth is cold showers, warmth is dead flowers, warmth is burnt food, warmth is letting me play the piano. Warmth is crying with me, not watching me cry. Warmth is nature, lying in the fields, doing dishes in the sink, turning skin into leaves, biting wind, feeling hair, warmth is what I need, warmth is wet paint brushes, ripe berries, guitar strings, scarred hands, warmth is untuned pianos.

He is warm.

I am cold.

Perhaps, he is the hairbrush that I need. He's the razor that I will let touch my skin, he is the sun and I am the moon, we fit perfectly together but we are on complete other sides of the world. I wear scarves to cover my hickeys, and he wears nothing. With him, I dream that we never have to wear anything again.

With you, I dreamed.

With him, I dream.

There was never really the chance to be able to dream that day because Ryan was making things right and he sort of threw his apologies down Brendon's stairs and hoped none of them broke and he didn't know what Brendon was doing but he was down with Bogart, cutting his hands open again from carving too fast. It didn't help that his knife was a little rusty and was also found under a bench in Westlake Park and had infected his hand a number of times. For a second, Brendon didn't even notice the crashing of objects being thrown down his stairs, but he looked up with a frown when Bogart ran over to the disastrous looking heap of things at the bottom of the stairs.

If this was Ryan's sorry excuse for an apology, Brendon wasn't feeling very forgiving. Bogart had sat himself down on top of Ryan's pile of pathetic, and Brendon was awfully certain that he would leave Bogart there. Still, it looked like there was a record at the bottom of everything and Brendon was sort of a slut for anything on vinyl so he let Bogart sit on top of the rest of the pile while he slid the record out from the bottom.

Oh, god.

Brendon bit his lip and frowned sullenly at the record in his hand. It was Viva la Vida, Brendon's favorite Coldplay album, and he wasn't sure if he had ever told Ryan what his favorite album was but this made it seem like, at some point, he had. Or Ryan just knew him too well. The record was old and the cover sort of permanently dusty. Brendon pulled open the sides and pulled out a shiny black pressing of it. All of a sudden he was dreadfully curious to see what else Ryan was trying to buy his forgiveness with, and picked Bogart to place him on the floor next to the pile of crap. Brendon sat down on the carpet and first picked up a packet of gum.

That's what it was. His gum. And lots of it, there were about eight whole packets of it with three little gum packages inside. All in all, he now had three hundred and thirty six sticks of gum to chew.

Under the gum was a knife, a silvery thing that was about the length of a pair of glasses. It manually opened and shut and definitely wasn't anything fancy but there wasn't any rust on it because it was perfectly clean and shiny and new. Opening and closing it were smooth movements, but Brendon placed it next to the unopened gum packets on the floor. This was all a petty scheme of Ryan's to get Brendon to forgive him and what made it so petty was the fact that Ryan couldn't come down to the basement and use all those big words he was so comfortable with to just tell Brendon he was sorry.

In a way, both of them were petty. It was Brendon's fault for snooping and Ryan's fault for doing the writing in the first place and Brendon would have gone up and apologized if not for the fact that he was also being petty and immature. At least he was able to admit it.

The last thing in Ryan's sorry pile was a small, rectangular wooden box. When Brendon reluctantly picked it up, he realized that it was a carving. Not a particularly good one at all, but it was a model of one of the gum packets. Ryan had carved it. Taped to the back was a piece of yellow legal pad paper that Brendon very slowly unfolded. A note. Of course.

Ryan's handwriting was dark blue against the bright yellow paper and such an inky mess that Brendon could hardly make out the words.

"Dear Brendon,

I'm very sorry. Honestly, I am. And you're probably going to get mad that this is how I'm choosing to apologize instead of just saying it to your face like I should (and probably will eventually) but I'm just trying to get some sort of an apology out, even if it is just on paper.

There's nothing I can say to justify my actions. I'm not going to say "oh but it was because you're interesting" or "oh it's just loosely based off of you," no, it's not. I was writing about you and what I know about your life and I'm so very, very sorry.

Because I'm not mature and also really apologetic, I got you some stuff because I don't know how else to apologize. It's stupid. I know you like Coldplay and I found that record and I know you cut yourself a lot with your knife so I got you a nicer knife to cut yourself with.

Wow, that sounds horrible.

Also, I like your gum. A lot. I like the way it smells and the taste of it. I haven't actually tasted it but I've tasted your lips after you've chewed it and that didn't taste too bad so I got you some more of it because you always chew it when you're happy but when you're sad you don't and I don't know why that is but I got you more of it. More happiness, right?

I also carved out a gum packet (not with this knife) because I wanted to do a carving to show you that I would finish what I started. What I started being a carving. I didn't finish the flower because I was too much of a wimp to go to your room and get it.

Sorry about that.

Sorry about everything, really. Hopefully I'll be able to get my head out my ass presently.

Love, Ryan."

Brendon stared. The whole entire letter sounded nothing like Ryan because Ryan didn't talk, Ryan's entire personality was made up of being cold and angsty and this felt so warm and kind that Brendon and that "love" at the end was literally bringing tears to Brendon's eyes and it felt terrible and fantastic at the same time and he brought a scarred hand to his eye to wipe away the tears.

He was crying.

He hadn't cried in so long. It wasn't a sad crying, really, it was sort of a type of crying that came around because he had felt too much for too long and was now realizing that he was in love with someone else, this someone being a brown haired guy whose smiles were sly and whose humor was dark and who really, actually, had a heart. A guy who gave Brendon knives and made him cry in the best way possible.

Brendon stumbled upstairs in the dark house, trying not to notice how none of the lights were on and how dark and cold the entire place felt, to Ryan's floor, thinking about the entire "emergency" thing, thinking about how much Ryan had seemed to hate him when they first met. He opened Ryan's door without asking permission and Ryan was at his desk, sat over his typewriter, and Brendon rushed in with something like an "I'm so sorry" lost before either of them could hear it and Ryan had stood up and they were hugging.

Ryan hadn't hugged anyone in so long. Brendon's head was over his shoulder, arms around his back, and things felt so sensitive and emotional and different than they usually felt. Brendon was shaking, sort of, and it took Ryan a second to realize that he was crying.

Oh, shit.

Ryan pulled back immediately.

"Was it that bad?" He asked with a voice full of worry. Brendon looked at him with clear, tearful eyes.

"What?" He said in a cracked voice.

"I'm so sorry- I didn't mean to make you cry! I just wanted you to be happy!" That brought on a fresh round of tears and Ryan looked increasingly panicked as Brendon sank onto his bed with his hands over his face in the stereotypical crying position. Brendon was sobbing crying, shoulders shaking and breath hitching and Ryan was awkwardly dancing around him until the sobbing sort of died down and Brendon peered through his fingers at Ryan.

Then he started laughing.

Everything either of them ever did together always ended up in laughter and Ryan stared in disbelief as Brendon replaced his hands over his face and started laughing. This time, Ryan joined in. They laughed themselves into hysterics on Ryan's bed, finally what Brendon wanted; him and Ryan in Ryan's bed, and when that finally died down, they laid side by side, sore from laughing. Brendon moved his head to look at Ryan with the biggest, dopiest grin on his face.

"Would you like to go on a date with me?" He asked, voice still cracked but this time because it had been overused for activities like laughing and crying. Ryan's smile fell, just a bit, and was silent.

"Well, I'll have to think about it." Brendon started to laugh but then rolled over onto his stomach, wincing.

"I can't laugh anymore." Ryan turned over and lay eye to eye with Brendon.

"Sorry." Ryan said, voice muffled by the blankets. Brendon's eyes squinted up as he started giggling again, and then re-rolled back over onto his back.

"Do you really have to think it over?" He asked, sounding plenty more serious now.

"Yup." Ryan said, unknowingly mimicking Brendon's actions and lying on his back next to him. "Gotta hit up my therapist for advice." Brendon was silent. "Jon." Ryan said, and Brendon said "Oh."

In the end, Ryan sort of felt bad coming back to Jon for advice when he was an asshole to him basically every time they saw each other, but it was what friends were for. They had been friends for too long for anything to drive them apart unless it was really shocking and horrible. Apparently, Ryan hadn't done anything too shocking or horrible.

He was back, again, like he always was, knocking at Jon's door a little too angstily because it never fucking rained when he was at Jon's place. Maybe it was because Jon was so great and happy and was probably pretty tight with the sun.

The door opened, it always did, with Jon's never changing tired looking face behind it.

"Ryan." He said as an acknowledgement, and walked back into his apartment. There was never such thing as an invitation in that apartment, and Ryan made his way in and shut the door behind him. "Feeling less pissy today?" Jon asked. He didn't sound mad, though, he never did, he just sounded like Jon. A little slow, a little tired, but still mildly interested in a way that people always liked about him.

Ryan wondered how it was to be likeable.

"Just a bit." Ryan said, and stared Jon down. "You're dating whatshisface, aren't you?" Jon's eyebrows went up a bit but he didn't blush like he had the tendency to do in high school. Still, this slow smile crept across his face and he nodded a little bit.

"Spencer." He confirmed, and Ryan nodded in recognition. "My guy..." He said in a drifty voice, and snapped out of his sort of daze to look back at Ryan, as if realizing he was just there.

"So you love him?" Jon shrugged, but was still smiling. They stood in silence and Ryan realized that this was Jon's kind of love. The kind where every time his "guy" was mentioned that he got lost in his thoughts of how much he loved him. The overtaking kind of love. The daydreaming kind of love.

"Yeah, so." Jon said in a sort of announcing voice. "What's up?"

"Well I think I might be in love with Brendon Urie?" Ryan said and sort of wanted to facepalm himself so hard that his hand went straight through his skull. Jon's eyebrows went back way up again and his arms seemingly crossed themselves over his chest.

"Really." It was phrased as a question, supposedly, but came out sounding like a statement.

"He asked me on a date."

"And what did you say?"

"Told him I had to talk to my therapist about it." Jon's eyes met Ryan's and his smile turned much less Spencer-centric and much more 'Ryan's humor is stupid.'

"So did your therapist give you any advice?"

"Nah, my therapist is a gay piece of shit." Jon smiled all genuine and dropped onto his fuckass ugly couch. Ryan settled on the floor in front of him and looked up at him like a little kid listening to his teacher tell a story.

"Alright, time for your fantastic gay therapist to deal out some good advice." Jon said, and Ryan clasped his hands in front of his folded legs and stared up at Jon. There was a long, long silence and Jon started making sort of strangled noises in the back of his throat and broke into laughter while Ryan just smiled because, like Brendon, he wasn't in the place to be able to laugh anymore.

"Gay piece of shit says yes."

"Yes?"

"Go out with him." Jon nodded, still sort of cackling to himself, and Ryan nodded too.

Watching Ryan, Jon could see just how much he had changed in the few months that Brendon had been with him and William had been without him. Ryan seemed lighter, happier, more talkative and more... laughy, really. He seemed better. And his face brightened up in that way that seemed to alien to Jon when he continued on past the dating topic and just went on with-

"Oh! I got a tattoo! Want to see?"


	17. 'Til Kingdom Come

"Yes." Brendon looked up. He was sat at the piano, a perfect silhouette that Ryan was undeniably attracted to and a little in love with and still confused over but being in love was so much better than being out of love and Brendon looked so damn tired and most, if not all of that, was Ryan's fault.

"Yes?" Brendon asked, the tired look melting away to something definitely more hopeful.

"Yes, I'll go on a date. With you." Brendon beamed, all of the angsty depressiveness gone in a moment, replaced by the bright Brendon that Ryan was used to.

"Fantastic. Brilliant. Thank you." Brendon had fully turned himself around on the piano bench and looked across the room at Ryan, who looked right back at him. There was a silence that neither of them filled up but Brendon was still smiling and he said- "I've never really read your writing."

"Unless you're snooping." Ryan rightfully pointed out and Brendon nodded, admittedly he was much more mature than Ryan in every sense of it, but let the remark slide.

"Can you write something on the spot?"

"'Course I can." Ryan said smugly. Brendon slid off the piano bench and towards his bedazzled trash bag. "What does that S stand for?" Ryan asked casually.

"Sarah." Brendon even hated saying her name- he hated every part of her. She was Brendon's William, dark haired and cold hearted and made him want to curl up into a tiny ball and then after a few hours of that she made him want to scream until he lost his voice and then she made him want to fall in love all over again.

Brendon produced his old finance notebook from the trash bag and handed it to Ryan with a pen that he snatched off of the piano that he used to write out his own sheet music. Ryan flopped down in the corner of Brendon's mattress with the notebook and pen held in his hands.

"Give me a minute." He said, and started writing. Brendon watched his hand slowly move down the page, eyes thinking and reading back on his words before writing more of them. Brendon's pen scratched amiably against the paper, and he stood in silence while Ryan wrote. After a while, Ryan looked up with sharp eyes. "You're putting me under immense pressure?"

"Huh?" Brendon asked.

"Standing over me like that." Brendon took a few steps back and watched Ryan from there. He shook his head with that same wild smile gracing his face before he bit the cap of the pen and kept writing. There was more of a while between that and the other while in which Brendon stared Ryan down, not in a threatening way and more of an in love way until Ryan turned the notebook around and showed a page filled up with his messy inked handwriting.

"Here." He tossed the book to Brendon, who fumbled before catching it. He started reading it without another word to Ryan.

Me.

Dark chocolate and vodka. Cold. Fall and winter. November. Snow on dirt with no grass in between. Worn out wedding bands. Frozen lakes and bare trees and grey skies and frostbite. Cold cold cold. The moon and stars glinting like chips of ice. Cars crushing leaves as they drive late late at night with no music playing. No radio. No heat.

You.

Lollipops and apple juice. Warm. Spring and summer. June. Dew on grass in the early mornings that melts away in the sunshine. Worn and tangled friendship bracelets. Deep blue skies and lush trees and bright flowers and balmy tans. Warm warm warm. The sun and beams shining like they've come to save the world. Cars running fast as they drive through the day with fast music playing. Radio on. Windows down.

We could rule the world if we wanted to and I know this for a fact. We could be sad and happy and rock and roll and in love all the time. Electric guitars and pianos and we would roll stardust in galaxies and smoke it until our heads ached dizzy and we felt like we were underwater.

I love you so bad that my head spins and your eyes make me feel like I'm flying because you're high on berry flavored bubblegum and I'm high on sadness. You blow a bubble and I explode and we could always just sit in high grass wrapped in a blanket and laugh together until the sun disappears and kills us all and still, I wouldn't mind freezing to death if I get to freeze to death with you.

You're magic and you're everything good in the world and we could live like modern day hippies until life catches up with that but until then you can sing until my throat gets sore and I can write until your wrist aches and we'll love until we're both spent and bleary eyed and then we'll curl up together and fall asleep in the clouds and float away into the Milky Way.

I hope you love me too.

Brendon reread it four times before he finally managed to look back up at Ryan, who looked nervous for the first time that Brendon had ever seen him.

"Wow." It wasn't really what Ryan wanted because it was sort of a horribly cliche thing that made him want to puke a little bit but Brendon wasn't smiling, instead he looked a little shocked, and he looked back at the notebook and up at Ryan and then back to the notebook and Ryan was getting sick and fucking tired.

"Wow?" He repeated, wanting a different sort of answer than that.

"That's so fucking good. Dude, holy shit." The 'dude' felt a little informal and Ryan curled back into the wall. "Ryan." Brendon said, and went back to rereading it a-fucking-gain. He looked up at the end, same as always, and smiled.

But it wasn't his normal smile.

"I do love you. Too." Now it was Ryan's turn to smile and Brendon fell onto the bed next to him. They sat close together, side by side, the notebook held tight in Brendon's hand. His other one found Ryan's hand, and Ryan watched as they wound together. It was so warm down in Brendon's basement and Ryan felt so oddly giddy and good.

Brendon did too, but in a nervous way because suddenly Ryan wasn't cold and evil and unlikeable; Ryan was handsome and talented and caring and the first person Brendon had ever taken on a real date (not as though they were in a relationship, they were just in love with each other and going on a date but that was all) and he couldn't stop blushing or thinking about how amazing Ryan was.

And how Ryan had been.

So damn skinny and so sad looking, his eyes buried in shadows and under glasses that he wore all day long and while he slept because it was too much work to take them off and it was better to have glasses on nonstop for a week than contacts, wearing last month's t-shirt and last year's hurt. Voice worn from hardly speaking, hands shaky, breaths shallow. He had terrified Brendon. Brendon had thought him to be a little wack, a little out of his head, and just a tiny bit crazy. All in all, he had turned out to be crazy but only because he was the most imaginative person Brendon had ever met, and only because maybe his imagination had up and stopped for a few months and had come back slowly but not slow enough to make Brendon feel welcome.

Silence was enough between him and Ryan burned when he thought about his last relationship with the last person he wanted to think about.

"Hey Brendon?" Ryan asked in a voice that wasn't his.

"Yeah?"

"You're not allowed to go and hurt me, okay?" Brendon looked from their intertwined hands up to Ryan's eyes.

"I would never."

"Promise?"

"Promise." Brendon said it without any hesitation and that made Ryan feel a little more hopeful than anything. It was almost like promises could last forever and when they fell asleep they could stay that way forever, perfect statues collecting dust in the whirlwind of a late spring night, through summer rains and fall chills and winter snow. Ryan and Brendon tied together by promises and "I love yous" and everything that inspired Ryan and everything that kept Brendon alive.

They woke up messy together all sprawled out on Brendon's kid sheets and lumpy mattress to the sunlight shining in the window. They hadn't lit up or gotten drunk or anything the past night, they had just talked and talked and fallen asleep as the sun and moon reversed their way around the Earth. Or the Earth had spun itself around them.

Beside the fact, they showered together in the obvious best of ways and after that Brendon told Ryan that he had to plot and also that Ryan should probably wear something nice for the wondrous date that they were going to embark on. Ryan was affirmative and disappeared upstairs while Brendon crashed back on his mattress, hands behind his head, in copious amounts of shock about how well everything felt.

And how much better it could get.

Happiness was always subjective but Ryan made Brendon feel on top of the fucking world and he did a giddy little dance and laughed out loud at nothing. Upstairs, Brendon heard dogs barking and soon enough, the door shutting. Wearing something nice and taking the dogs for a walk weren't the same things but Brendon could hardly have minded because he had reservations to make and nice clothes of his own to find. Which was stressful enough as he ended up in khaki shorts and a button down shirt with long sleeves that got caught around his bracelets. Brendon wasn't one for looking conventionally "nice."

Except Ryan thought he always did and it was pouring rain when they left which felt like comfort and Ryan couldn't stop smiling a little and Brendon held his hand as they started walking through the downpour.

"So." Brendon started as they had been walking in amicable silence for about half the distance to downtown.

"So." Ryan echoed. They were both soaked to the skin and it felt fantastic and not at all awkward, which it might have felt if Brendon hadn't re-brought up the topic of money laundering which made Ryan smile and think about how ridiculous things had been and gotten for such a small period of time that hardly mattered now because if he was happy now, then he would never be sad again.

That's the way it always felt. And that's the way it had always been before so there was no point in changing it now and Ryan admitted that yes, maybe he had considered laundering money at one point to turn out to be some big shot rich guy who ended up on Fox News talking about how he didn't do anything wrong. Then they started talking about liberal education versus vocational education like the stuck up assholes they were and Ryan was craving a cigarette a little bit but then Brendon started talking about Dave Grohl and they were downtown and soaked down to the bone but Ryan followed Brendon street after street until they stopped walking in front of a building.

The conversation faded out a bit and Ryan looked up at the building, a little skeptical.

"Uh." Brendon said, the picture of eloquence. "It's like, a museum." Ryan raised his eyebrows.

"Yeah?"

"Of art." Ryan beamed, a look that Brendon had only seen in moments of sarcasm.

"Nice." They went inside and there were other people, which made sense because of the rain, and Brendon had been nervous that maybe it was a bad idea but Ryan liked art, he liked art a lot and they walked from piece to piece, inspecting them and discussing them as though they were real critics and Ryan felt happy about it all because the art was fucking impressive and he got to talk like a pretentious stuck up asshole which was even better and him and Brendon kept holding hands and just-

He felt like a wimp when he wouldn't meet Brendon's eyes. He felt a little cowardly when he didn't talk about anything other than obscure artists that Brendon probably didn't care about. But he felt good holding Brendon's hand. He felt warm holding Brendon's hand. He felt alive holding Brendon's hand, and there was no better feeling in the entire world than consciously feeling alive.

"Brendon?" They had lapsed into a silence as they waded between other people like they could have been with the rain outside and Ryan liked the rain so much more than other people. But maybe he could get back to being okay with both of them at the same time.

"Yeah?"

"What's the best feeling in the world ever, to you?" Brendon paused, all thoughtful and sort of brooding like he knew how to look. Ryan loved looking at him.

"Feeling at home." And Brendon didn't know when he had started thinking of Ryan's house as a home but he had at some point, unknowingly, but now he realized that there was no place he'd rather be at the end of the day. Ryan smiled and met Brendon's eyes, both of theirs so bright, his face a little flushed, so uncharacteristic and fucking cute, somehow.

Brendon's eyes were slow and he smiled with his tongue between his teeth and Ryan looked sort of flustered and his smile got bigger and bigger without ever showing his teeth until he broke into a real, proper full smile and Brendon thought they were going to do the stupid "laughing for no reason" thing in the middle of a damn museum but Ryan turned away and Brendon snapped his gum loud enough to make a girl nearby jump.

It took them about three and a half hours to get through inspecting every single piece in the museum thoroughly, but Ryan could have gone on all day. All day and into the night because he loved the middle of the night and the moon (his favorite lesbian) and stars and Brendon and rain all combined with some words in between could have been the perfect thing, but Ryan would have to settle for a slow drizzle and Brendon with some words because they went from not talking at all to fast, messy conversation way too quickly.

It was warm outside and they walked and talked in the grey drizzle while they swung hands like little kids and it made Ryan feel all giddy that he could actually feel these things instead of pining over them in his own writing because sometimes writing was like dreaming and dreams didn't always come true.

Hardly ever.

Living in a dream was living in love and Ryan hated being in love because it always had to end at some point but this was fresh and this felt fast and good and like everything was perfectly alright and they were wandering again, at least Ryan felt like they were, with Ryan looking at Brendon like he couldn't get enough of him, he couldn't, like he was in love with him. He was.

They ended up somewhere else, somewhere down-downtown where tourists and rich people hung out and where buildings were glass but it was evening and the heavy sky was darkening and everything was flashy with raindrops and cars sped by all fast and Ryan felt more like he was in New York than Seattle; he felt a little like he was on cocaine and everything was moving quickly and he was feeling a lot of things but all of them were good and it was dark except there were lots of other lights and he was hanging onto someone who wasn't making him let go anytime soon.

"Brendon." Ryan said as though he were breathless.

"Yes?" They were standing on the edge of a crosswalk and Ryan was draped over Brendon's arm in an acutely gay and sort of desperate way.

"I'm really alive." Brendon smiled through a blown bubble, and Ryan leaned up and bit down on the bubble to pop it. Both of them ended up with bubblegum on their lips and Ryan nibbled it off of his own lips and kept smiling at Brendon as though the world would end if he stopped.

"Me too." They walked more and Ryan felt a little less like he was on drugs but still just as happy and god damn, this was the best day he had had in a while.

"Since we're self respecting adults," Brendon began in a semi sarcastic tone, "and on a date," (the word date made Ryan's heart rate spike up a bit) "we have to go to a super fancy restaurant and order, like, two pieces of bread and pay five dollars for them." It sounded like a fantastic time and Ryan loved fancy restaurants because they allowed him to pretend to be someone else so easily; he could eat tiny bits of food and make huge judgements based off of them and raise his eyebrows and be mean to waiters and swirl his wine and comment on the "legs" of it and then write an actual food critic article about the one minuscule bite he had of some ridiculously expensive dish and-

Ryan just loved acting. But he didn't have to act excited about this prospect around Brendon, and they walked into said fancy ass restaurant exactly as though they knew what they were doing. They were allowed a table, probably because Ryan put on an odd accent and Brendon wouldn't stop talking, or getting weird looks because of his odd getup of shorts, a button down shirt, and Vans sneakers.

Ryan ordered wine in his weird accent (a mixture of French, German, and British) while Brendon asked about how every individual drink on the menu and the "notes" of flavor they had in them. Ryan wanted to break down into giggles when the waiter left but kept his cool with a sly smile over the flickering candle in the middle of their table.

Their drinks came at some point and then Ryan asked if they could have two pieces of bread and that's it and the waiter looked confused and Brendon said, "I'm sorry, he's European," and Ryan, who had been taking a sip of his expertly swirled wine, choked on it and hacked it and it splattered onto the clean white tablecloth and Brendon was still chewing his damn gum and his face had turned bright red with resisting laughter so much but Ryan then knocked his menu onto the floor as an excuse to leave the situation and disappeared under the tablecloth, cackling while Brendon dealt with the waiter.

The waiter left again at some point and Ryan dissolved into tears on the floor under the tablecloth while Brendon sounded a little like he was crying on the other side of the cloth while he tried not to laugh. Eventually, Ryan pulled himself back out from under the table and when he saw Brendon the latter put his head down on the table in his arms and started laughing in a sort of strangled way into his arms. Ryan had tears on his face from laughing so hard.

At last, their two pieces of bread and "that's it" arrived and so did the message that they would be have to asked to leave if they kept disrupting the atmosphere and they both sobered up with solemn nods and both of them were asked to show their IDs again before the waiter disappeared.

"Good bread, my comrade." Ryan said, and Brendon nodded with a jaunty smile. They finished their alcohol and bread and then left ten dollars on the table before they scraped their chairs back and exited with just as much dignity as they had walked in with.

Outside, they walked up and down around the waterfront and watched the lights reflect in the water until Ryan got sick of all the people and they walked home under the deep navy black sky lit by the golden misty haze of streetlamps.

It got empty around where home was, home, but both of them were quiet except for the chewing sound of Brendon's gum. He kept a pack of it in his pocket now. Ryan stopped in front of his house, remembering the fateful frozen snowy day when Brendon had shown up.

And then he turned with a sort of seriousness in his eyes that Brendon hadn't seen at all that day. And he leaned into Brendon who tilted his chin up and kissed him with enough emotion behind it for everything to explode a little bit.

They kissed like they were on a certain Green Day album cover, a picture of modern day romance, and maybe the stars still screamed Ryan's name sometimes and bridges looked inviting late at night but they could all wait until he was shit out of luck but right now he was so fresh in love and the taste of Brendon's bubblegum filled him up and made him laugh, laugh against Brendon's lips and laugh and laugh and laugh and they kissed all the way up to Ryan's bedroom which, all of a sudden, felt very warm.

Home.

Fin ;


End file.
